The Role of Guidance and Prior Knowledge in Serious Games
To facilitate an effective public awareness training, the learners must assimilate (learn) new knowledge through instruction that will result in a learning outcome of (semi-)permanent behavioral change. The term knowledge refers to a learner’s previously established skills and know-how, and is more commonly known as prior knowledge in literature; whereas instruction refers to the method that delivers the information to the learners. In this study, instruction refers to an in-house created serious game for disaster preparedness training.
The amount of guidance available during learning is a useful way of classifying instructional methods, which can range from fully guided, to partially guided, and unguided. Research showed that in-game guidance in the form of feedback could have a greater impact on novices (Mayer & Johnson, 2010; Moreno & Mayer, 2005) than experienced players. Educational practitioners likewise prescribed more guidance to new and inexperienced learners, and less guidance to more experienced learners (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, 2006).
In the case of serious games, the levels and depths of in-game help, information gleaned from conversations with non-player characters (NPCs), and tutorials all contribute to the amount of in-game guidance available to players, which can impact how they learn (Kiili, 2005). Meta-analyses revealed that serious games without guidance could lead to players learning only the gameplaying mechanics instead of the intended knowledge in the game (Ke, 2009; Wouters, van der Spek, & van Oostendorp, 2013). Guidance in serious games can be effective in cultivating players’ higher-level thinking skills, including problem solving ability and learning transfer (Erhel & Jamet, 2013).