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Higher education is confronted with a new generation of students having a different relationship to technology and education than the previous ones. Generation Z (born after 2000 (Ozkan & Solmaz, 2015), like generation Y (born between 1980 and 1999 (Lissitsa & Kol, 2016), have known the Internet and smartphones since their young age, inducing both positive (such as collaboration and communication) and negative (for example less concentration and difficulty to learn by heart) effects (Issa & Isaias, 2016). Both students generations demonstrate a low interest in classical lectures (Baker, Matulich, & Papp, 2011).
Learning is an active process in which the learners themselves should construct the required knowledge and understanding (Gagne, 1965). To this end, motivation (Holzinger, Pichler, Almer, & Maurer, 2001) and joy (Shneiderman, 1998) are important factors to enhance the learning process. One of the answers to the learning problem faced by new students generations is gamification, which consists in using game mechanisms as part of an activity (here teaching) to make it more attractive (J. Hamari, J. Koivisto, & H. Sarsa, 2014a). The gamification process is based on different tools, including serious games.
A serious game is a game used with a purpose other than entertainment: learning and training (R. Michael & L. Chen, 2006). Serious games have many benefits compared to a traditional lecture teaching regarding problem-solving skills, knowledge acquisition, higher cognitive gains and improved attitudes towards learning (J. Hamari, J. Koivisto, & H. Sarsa, 2014b) (Vogel et al., 2006). Furthermore, motivation, engagement, representation and understanding of knowledge is enhanced (Crocco, Offenholley, & Hernandez, 2016) (Sauvé, Renaud, & Gauvin, 2007).
The diversity of fields in which serious games have been used is pointed out in the literature review of P. Backlund & M. Hendrix (2013) on the effectiveness of serious games. Serious games have already been successfully used to teach natural risk management (Taillandier & Adam, 2018a), Information Technology (Carlos Oliveira, Marcos Cintra, & Francisco Mendes Neto, 2013), fire safety (Rüppel & Schatz, 2011) for example. However, there are very few applications to the field of Civil Engineering, and none of them tackles the learning of construction projects.
To fill this gap, the authors designed Domego (“Building” in Esperanto), a serious game that intends to provide students with active and experiential learning of the key issues of a construction project. In this paper, the following specific objectives are addressed: (a) identify the specific play mechanisms necessary for optimal learning in the civil engineering field, (b) provide an innovative game-based approach to teach construction project, (c) investigate to what extent the developed serious-game contribute to student learning and (d) determine the barriers to the adoption of such technique.
Following a literature review on the existing serious games for teaching in civil engineering, the needs for game-based learning are identified and the learning objectives of the serious game are set. Then, the principles and the key play mechanisms of the serious game Domego are presented. Conclusions on its usefulness and applicability are drawn from the experimentation of Domego during a pedagogical sequence.