1. Developing Serious Games
International Simposium of Informatics Education(SIIE
2013), Viseu, Portugal
Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon,
balta@fdi.ucm.es , @BaltaFM
e-UCM research group, www.e-ucm.es
http://slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon

2. e-UCM group and projects
‣ CS Professor at Complutense U.
Director of e-UCM
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‣ e-UCM research group about
Learning technologies
www.e-ucm.es
15 researchers
Serious games
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Application to the medical domain
Based on our experience
in creating and evaluating
serious games
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3. Serious games definition
‣ “any meaningful use of computerized game/game
industry resources whose chief mission is not
entertainment”
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Sawyer, B. (2007). The "Serious Games" Landscape. Presented at
the Instructional & Research Technology Symposium for
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Camden, USA.
‣ “A mental contest, played with a computer in accordance
with specific rules, that uses entertainment, to further
government or corporate
training, education, health, public policy, and strategic
communication objectives.”
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Zyda, M. (2005). From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to
Games. Computer, 38(9), 25-32 (pp. 26)

4. Games as educational tools
‣ Video games can be instrumental in acquiring
abilities and skills like
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Spatial perception and recognition
Development of visual discernment and separation of
visual attention
Development of inductive logic
Cognitive development in scientific/technical
aspects
Development of complex skills
Spatial representation
Inductive discovery
Iconic code construction
Gender construction
Aguilera M de, Mendiz A. Video games and education. Computers in Entertainment. 2003;1(1):10

5. Serious Games use?
‣ Serious Games have probed to be educationally
effective in several domains
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Medicine, military, business, corporate training
‣ But still is a low adoption of Serious Games in
mainstream education
‣ Serious Games considered usually as a
complementary content
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Mainly used for motivational purposes
No actual impact on the final mark

6. Serious Games?
The NMC Horizon Report:
2013 Higher Education
Edition
Time-to-Adoption
Horizon: Two to Three
Years
‣ Games and
Gamification
But not present in the
2013:
‣ Latin American Higher
Education
http://www.nmc.org/publications/
6

7. Science
Pirates, http://sciencepirates.com/
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8. ReMission
Intended for young
people with cancer and
oral chemotherapy
•effective tool that supports
treatment adherence
•sense of power and control
over their disease

9. Learn how to be a teacher 
9

10. Educational videogames challenges
‣ Identification of more large success cases
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including scientific and formal evaluation
‣ Scalability and maintainability
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reducing initial cost and TCO
‣ Take into account curriculum and involve educators
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Teachers are a key element in games use
‣ Include student evaluation into games
‣ Actual application in real educational settings
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Taking into account current technical infrastructures

11. Serious games: our vision
‣ Wikipedia approach to serious games
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Reduce the cost of creating games
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Produce games that can be reused
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Simplify the integration of games in the pre-existing elearning infrastructure
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Provide user with easy to use tools to create the games
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Apply first to domains or problems with clear added
value

12. ¿Serious games?
Margolis JL, Nussbaum M, Rodriguez P, Rosas R. Methodology for evaluating a novel education technology: a
case study of handheld video games in Chile. Computers & Education. 2006;46(2):174–191.

13. Scratch: visual programming
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14. Gamestar Mechanic
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15. eAdventure game platform
Open code authoring environment for the production of point-and-click
adventure games & immersive learning simulations
Oriented to
educators
No programming
required
Multiplatform, Multilingual, now moving to HTML5 and tablets

16. http://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es With MGH-Harvard University
http://www.chermug.eu
With ONT, educ@ONT

17. Games for English practice
Download from e-ucm or from CATEDU
http://catedu.es/webcatedu/index.php/descargas/e-adventures

18. Other games
Lost in Space
La Dama Boba
Game to learn XML basics
Play at http://bit.ly/LiS-XML
Based on The Foolish Lady by Lope de Vega
The game is available at http://damaboba.e-ucm.es/ and in Google Play

19. Cost per minute of play
eAdventure games
$300
$3K
Science
Pirates
$8K
Immune
Attack
$25K
AAA games

20. Educational videogames
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learning-by-doing
problem solving
narrative features
keep flow states
‣ …but (educational) games are difficult and costly to
create and it is difficult to integrate all the required
expertise

21. Educational Game Development Approach
Torrente et at (in press) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in
Heathcare Education. IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies.

22. Domain experts
‣ Have the knowledge of the subject
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Could be familiar with problems in learning
‣ Usually teach to others (training, mentor, etc.)
‣ Usually not open to learn new ways to describe their
knowledge
‣ Don t know how
to create games

23. Game authoring
‣ Complex procedure
‣ Generally involves several different experts:
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Educational expert, domain expert, game programmer
Communication problems
‣ No predefined process
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More an art than a science
‣ Open questions
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Maintenance, new versions with required educational
changes, etc

24. Sample games
Important that domain experts, educational
designer and programmers have similar
expectations
=

25. Improving collaboration
Knowledge explicitation
known by the expert
‣ Case-based teaching
‣ Problem-based learning
Simple representations
‣ Correct knowledge
‣ Common errors
‣ Incremental process
Rapid prototyping
‣ Expert play it to check it

26. Cases and flow diagrams
‣ Specific cases: Easy to communicate
‣ Flow diagrams: Understandable by everyone
‣ Establish game flow and other requirements

27. Game elements
Game designers propose game elements + game mechanics
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28. Rapid prototyping
‣ eAdventure allows progressive
addition of multimedia resources
‣ Easy to test concepts before capturing resources
‣ Reduces changes to resources, which are the
costliest part of development

29. Assets & prototyping

30. Evaluation Questions for Serious Games
‣ Does it work? (beta-testing)
‣ Is the content accurate and appropriate for target audience?
(content review)
‣ Is it easy to use and easy to learn to use? (usability-navigation)
‣ Is it compelling/engaging for the target audience?
(realism, satisfaction)
‣ What are the learning goals? (learning)
‣ How well do the learners achieve those goals? (learning)
‣ What else are they learning? (learning)
‣ Does it track the learner‟s performance? (learning
management system)
http://simworkshops.stanford.edu/06_0626/pdf/Evaluating_serious_games.pdf

31. Educational Game Development Approach
Torrente et at (in press) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in
Heathcare Education. IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies.

32. Case study:First-aid game
‣ Game to teach first aid (or basic vital support) to
high-school students
‣ Developed in collaboration with medical
professionals and educational experts
‣ Three basic situations
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Choking
Heart attack
Unconsciousness
‣ Based on accepted international medical procedures
(ILCOR'11)

33. http://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es

34. First-aid game
Individual scores to make students visit all paths
Random changes to encourage replayability
Different media to transmit and reinforce knowledge

35. Evaluation of the first-aid game
‣ 342 high school students, 4 different middle and
high schools
‣ Control group with 2 emergency medical doctors

36. Experiment group
‣ After a short introduction of the game students play
for up to 50 minutes

37. Control group
‣ Best educational situation available
‣ Same time but with 2 emergency medical doctors
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A medical mannequin
An automatic defibrillator

38. Results: acceptance
‣ Students„ opinions based on tag cloud selection
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Complex
Simple
36
Difficult
Easy
0
Useless
Useful
1
Boring
Fun
38
40
112
7
46

39. Results: learning
‣ Pre and post test to evaluate student knowledge
With the game
Marchiori EJ, Ferrer G, Fernández-Manjón B, Povar Marco J, Suberviola González JF, Giménez Valverde A.
Video-game instruction in basic life support maneuvers. Emergencias. 2012;24:433-7.

40. Discussion
‣ Games are not the silver bullet but can be a very
powerful educational resource if included in the
learning flow
‣ Systematize the game design
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Include the educator early in the loop
‣ Simplify the task of the teacher
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Facilitating the integration of games in Virtual Learning
Environments, just as another learning resource
Include automatic assessment for game-based learning
activities

41. Thank you!
balta@fdi.ucm.es
@BaltaFM
Slides will be available at
http://slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon
41

42. References
•eAdventure. http://e-adventure.e-ucm.es/
•MGH Learning Lab. http://www.massgeneral.org/learninglab/
•First Aid Game. http://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es/
•Marchiori EJ, Ferrer G, Fernández-Manjón B, Povar Marco J, Suberviola González
JF, Giménez Valverde A. Video-game instruction in basic life support maneuvers.
Emergencias. 2012;24:433-7. (download PDF)
•Pablo Moreno-Ger, Javier Torrente, Julián Bustamante, Carmen Fernández-Galaz, Baltasar
Fernández-Manjón, María Dolores Comas-Rengifo (2010). Application of a low-cost web-based
simulation to improve students’ practical skills in medical education. International Journal of Medical
Informatics 79(6), 459-467 (doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2010.01.017).
•Brian Johnston, Liz Boyle, Ewan MacArthur, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón (2013). The role of
technology and digital gaming in nurse education. Nursing Standard, Vol 27, No 28, pp 35-38, March
•Ángel del Blanco, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, Pedro Ruiz, Manuel Giner (2013). Using
videogames facilitates the first visit to the operating theatre. Medical Education. Vol 47, Issue 5, pp.
519-520
•Borro-Escribano B., Martínez-Alpuente I., del Blanco A., Torrente J., Fernández-Manjón
B., Matesanz R. (in press) Application of Game-Like Simulations in the Spanish National Transplant
Organization. Transplantation Proceedings Journal.
•Borro-Escribano B. et Al. (in press) Developing Game-Like Simulations to Formalize Tacit
Procedural Knowledge: The ONT Experience. Educational Technology Research and Development
Journal. Springer
Check www.e-ucm.es/publications/ for updated references

43. Our current projects
Increasing patient safety
using games
Modelling/teaching medical procedures at
National Transplant Organization