On Evaluating Social Learning Outcomes of Serious Games to Collaboratively Address Sustainability Problems: A Literature Review

Robert-Jan Den Haan,Mascha Van Der Voort

doi:10.3390/su10124529

Abstract

Serious games are increasingly explored as collaborative tools to enhance social learning on sustainable management of land and natural resources. A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the current state of the art of the different methods and procedures used to assess social learning outcomes of collaborative serious games. Forty-two publications were identified and included in the review following study selection and quality assessment steps. Extracted data from the publications were categorized in relation to five research questions. Approaches that were used to assess cognitive, normative, and relational learning outcomes of collaborative serious games were subsequently identified based on the categorizations. As a result, these approaches distinguished between the nature of learning in the assessment of collaborative serious games. Combined, these approaches provide an overview of how to assess social learning outcomes of collaborative serious games, including the methods and procedures that can be used, and may serve as a reference for scholars designing and evaluating collaborative serious games.

Highlights

Environmental sustainability problems are typically complex and multi-scale, concern inherent uncertainty, and affect multiple stakeholders and agencies
Serious games are increasingly explored as a method to establish social learning on sustainable natural resources management and urban planning [19,20,21,22]
The research presented in this paper adds to this gap by answering the main research question: What is the current state of the art of the different methods and procedures used to assess social learning outcomes of collaborative serious games? To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted to survey the empirical assessment of social learning through collaborative serious games

Summary

Introduction

Environmental sustainability problems are typically complex and multi-scale, concern inherent uncertainty, and affect multiple stakeholders and agencies. Solving sustainability problems concerns the management of land and natural resources in a way that creates and maintains prosperous social, economic, and ecological systems [1]. To address such problems, decision-making needs to be adaptive to deal with the uncertainties and needs to include the diversity of knowledge and values of all affected stakeholders. Scholars have advocated active experimentation and continuous evaluation, summarized as learning-by-doing, in natural resources management [2,3,4,5]. Baird et al [17] define three types of learning outcomes in relation to social learning: cognitive, the acquisition of new or restructuring of existing knowledge; normative, a shift in viewpoints, values or paradigms; and relational, an improved understanding of others’ mind-sets and enhanced trust and ability to cooperate between stakeholders

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Conclusion