Indexing Serious Games to Meet Adaptive E-Learning System Needs

Problem And Justification Of Need

Serious Games provide teachers with an innovative and interactive tool that can be used to support new teaching models. Currently, there is a discussion about what contexts and educational environments are where Serious Games can be more adequate and profitable. But it is clear that the interactions of learners / players while playing a Serious Game can generate a huge amount of valuable information, if these interaction data are available and presented in a consistent way, they can be used with goals different such as monitoring and assistance of the learner or the evaluation of his activities in the game as he progresses.

So the major issue of Serious Games is what is called “tracking” or the monitoring and assistance of learners / players during their progress. It is a method that allows the systematic collection and analysis of information as learners progress and assess their skills by providing a global summary of their activities and an overview of modules or tools most frequently accessed or just used as points of entry / exit [Hallinan, M. T., 1994].

Tracking challenges for Serious Games:

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  The learner / player: to encourage his motivation and thus his learning by giving him advices to advance in the game;

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  The tutor / teacher: give visibility to the knowledge acquired through the use of the game;

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  The designer / engineer pedagogue: improve the game whether it is fun or educational in its following versions by detecting frequent mistakes of players;

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  The game environment: adapt the content offered to the player according to his performance;