This chapter focuses on aspects of the integration of serious games in the field of education by examining the quality of serious games intended to be integrated into education. This review process must take into account the coherence between all the aspects constituting the serious games as they are characterized by their diversity in terms of content and quality. By conducting a comparative study based on the various studies of evaluation and classification of serious games already carried out, the authors have focused their research effort in this chapter on the design of a tool for the evaluation of serious games quality intended to be used in the field of education. A tool that determines if the learning methods related to games are correlated with pedagogical aspects and contributes to the knowledge of serious games and promote their use in the educational sphere. The study offers two levels of evaluation, global and specific; the overall level allows a global judgment unlike the specific evaluation that ensures that there is always a balance between different aspects of serious games.
TopScientific Context And Objectives
For a long time, educators have tended to ignore games as a source of education. Today the rapid development of the games industry, their immense effect on the new generation and the existence of certain characteristics within them eventually advantageous for educational purposes, have led to an increase in the interest shown by the educational community, mainly in the last decade with regard to their use in the field of education. [Petros, P., & Georgios, F., 2011].
However, serious games for education are also characterized by their diversity in terms of content and quality, so that the evaluation and review of their educational, technical and playful aspects is a prerequisite before any introduction into the field. It will also be necessary for educators to determine whether game-related learning methods are correlated with the pedagogical aspects of the corresponding instruction.
In his thesis, Julian Alvarez also defined the basic criteria of a good Serious Game for Education as follows [Alvarez, J., 2007]:
- •
A Serious Game must above all be a coherent system both in form and substance;
- •
It must also be adapted to the context of use and address all the learners it targets without discrimination;
- •
Have good ergonomic criteria;
- •
A good Serious Game must also be able to convey at best the playful and educational dimensions without one taking precedence over the other;
- •
The Serious Game should make sure that the objectives of the play scenario correspond to those of the teaching scenario;
- •
The Serious Game must give place to both the learners and the tutor who supervises them;
In addition, Julian Alvarez considers that a very good Serious Game should be able to adapt his environment to the profile of each player taking into account his level of learning, his playful video culture and therefore his ability to use the Serious Game.
TopSections Of The Proposed Grid
The grid is divided into four sections each section is composed of elements “subsections” every one of these elements is associated with a set of criteria in order to identify the different aspects constituting a serious game and describes each separately in its own context: educational, technical and playful aspect. [EL Borji, Y., & Khaldi, M., 2014b]
Figure 1. Descriptive diagram of the assessment grid