Serious Games in Higher Education in the Transforming Process to Education 4.0—Systematized Review

Abstract

The digital transformation associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution is having an impact on the way we teach. Under the term Education 4.0, new teaching methods, new technologies, as well as a student-centered approach, are expected to be used in teaching. One established method of teaching is the use of Serious Games, as it has various positive effects in terms of motivation and engagement. This paper deals with the question of how the transformation towards Education 4.0 influences the way Serious Games are designed and used in the context of higher education. To this end, a systematized literature review was conducted. Out of 550 publications, 28 were included. This revealed works on the general conception as well as studies on Serious Games in various areas of university teaching. The results show different concepts of Serious Games, with the structure often being adapted to learning content and not to students. In terms of technical implementation, Serious Games are mostly web- or desktop-applications instead of new technologies such as VR. As a result, new concepts seem necessary to adapt Serious Games to Education 4.0. In the future, we want to design Serious Games that respond flexibly to students’ needs and make it easy to integrate new technologies.