Learning analytics for location-based serious games

Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2017, 2017

Educational games can greatly benefit from integrating support for learning analytics. Game authoring tools that make this integration as easy as possible are therefore an important step towards improving adoption of educational games. We describe the process of integrating full support for game learning analytics into uAdventure, a serious game authoring tool. We argue that such integrations greatly systematize, simplify and reduce both the cost and the knowledge required to apply analytics to serious games. In uAdventure, we have used an analytics model for serious games and its supporting implementation as a xAPI application. We describe how player interactions are automatically traced, and provide an interaction-model-trace table with the general game traces that are generated by the editor. Also, we describe the custom editors that simplify the task of authoring game-dependant analytics. Thanks to these integrated analytics, games developed with uAdventure provide detailed tracking information that can be sent to a cloud analytics server, to be analyzed and visualized with dashboards that provide game developers and educators with insights into how games are being played.

Advances in intelligent systems and computing, 2019

The development of game experiences based on the player's location is becoming increasingly popular. This games are used to increase players' skills and knowledge about a particular topic in different contexts like education, health and tourism. When pervasive or narrative components are added, it becomes evident the need for a tool to manage the information in an appropriate and dynamic way. When we talk about pervasiveness, in addition to the elements of space and time, there is an additional component related to social interaction, which can be achieved through the exchange of information between various games to provide a better player experience. For this reason, in this article we present a platform enabled for the creation and edition of game experiences based on the player's location. Which has the ability to exchange information between projects, including narrative in the different games. A developed experience evidences the relevance of this platform in the education context.

AERA, 2014

A central challenge to educational videogame research is capturing salient in-game data on play and learning. ADAGE (Assessment Data Aggregator for Game Environments) is a click-stream data framework currently being developed by the Games+Learning+Society research center to facilitate standardized collection of embedded assessment data across games. ADAGE integrates core game design structures into a click-stream data (telemetry) schema, which is then seeded with context vital to informing learning analyses. These data can be used to identify patterns in play within and across players (using data mining and learning analytic techniques) as well as statistical methods for testing hypotheses that compare play to content models. Three provided analysis examples show this diversity, combining applied statistics with Markov modeling and classification tree visualization. Overall, ADAGE provides a standardized game telemetry framework with a rich, method-agnostic data yield, efficient enough to have scalability, and flexible enough to use across games.

2018

Research argues that digital educational games have the potential to make learning more interesting and more effective. However, creating engaging game-based learning experiences remains challenging. To address this challenge, the authors present the game authoring pipeline of the Beaconing Platform that enables the construction of location-based metagames, where a metagame is defined as the component that provides the overarching narrative experience for players. The paper describes two such metagames that integrate quizzes into location-based challenges to create more flexible and more engaging learning experiences that blend virtual and real worlds. The Outcomes of the playing sessions are discussed to support the improvement of the play-learn experiences

This paper reports on the design and evaluation of player experiences related to a Location-Based Game. Location-based games (or LBGs) seek to move gamified play into the " real world " of cities, parks and other locations. These games are played in everyday places, where game information is tied to specific locations (Magerkurth et al. 2005). This connection to real-world physicality makes the game experience multidimensional and fun for players of different ages. Yet, to be able to envision and create an urban gamescape means that a set of criteria is met. The unique challenge of creating and orchestrating location-based game experiences requires a certain sensitivity of its designers to multiple factors that must be considered. These may include but are not limited to factors such as the city infrastructure, flows of urban traffic, maintenance of recreational areas and human-related factors such as cooperation with the city administration. The game introduced in the paper represents an urban game adventure built upon the platform of geocaching. We approach the game with a focus on its potential learning affordances. We ask how the pitfalls in creating opportunities for learning through location-based games could be avoided, especially when designing pedagogic aims into an urban gaming experience fit for school-aged children.

2018 10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 2018

Serious games are usually used or deployed in an educational setting as an isolated or individual activity, disconnected from other curricular activities. However, to really increase the adoption of serious games in different educational scenarios, the combination and integration of games into the educational flow should be simplified. We envision Serious Games as new type of educational activity that can be combined as parts of other games (e.g. minigames integrated in larger games), integrated into other online activities, or even mixed with both game and non-game activities. In addition, if we want to make the most from serious games, a learning analytics system must be in place to harvest and analyze interactions, providing metrics and insights to instructors regarding the gameplay sessions. Moreover, if a course-level learning analytics strategy is designed, it must be aligned with the game learning analytics. This approach requires communication between games and educational activities used during the educational experience. From a game learning analytics standpoint, gaining insights from these integrated experiences introduces new requirements within potentially complex multi-level or hierarchical activities. Moreover, the analysis required to generate these metrics should be both efficient and provide insight in an understandable way and for different stakeholders. This paper describes an approach to multilevel game learning analytics from the perspectives of data model, implementation architecture, and result visualization in teacheroriented dashboards.

2021 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)

Data science applications in education are quickly proliferating, partially due to the use of LMSs and MOOCs. However, the application of data science techniques in the validation and deployment of serious games is still scarce. Among other reasons, obtaining and communicating useful information from the varied interaction data captured from serious games requires specific data analysis and visualization techniques that are out of reach of most non-experts. To mitigate this lack of application of data science techniques in the field of serious games, we present T-Mon, a monitor of traces for the xAPI-SG standard. T-Mon offers a default set of analysis and visualizations for serious game interaction data that follows this standard, with no other configuration required. The information reported by T-Mon provides an overview of the game interaction data collected, bringing analysis and visualizations closer to non-experts and simplifying the application of serious games.

2014 IEEE 14th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, 2014

This paper addresses the implications of combining learning analytics and serious games for improving game quality, monitoring and assessment of player behavior, gaming performance, game progression, learning goals achievement, and user's appreciation. We introduce two modes of serious games analytics: in-game (real time) analytics, and post-game (off-line) analytics. We also explain the GLEANER framework for in-game analytics and describe a practical example for offline analytics. We conclude with a brief outlook on future work, highlighting opportunities and challenges towards a solid uptake of SGs in authentic educational and training settings.

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2018

Currently, games that combine the real and virtual worlds have higher availability, wide extension, and better performance thanks to the advances in mobile technologies. These advances allow increasing the accessibility by people. That is why mobile devices have become a fundamental part of daily lives of people. It has involved to people in different types of user experiences as those given by augmented reality, geolocation, virtual reality, among others. This kind of game is defined like Pervasive Game (PG)it is known also as Pervasive Game Experience (PGE)-, where the game world is extended beyond limits of the virtual world, and it can become in part of the player reality. This kind of games can impact the player lives in a positive or negative way. In this line, the academic and industrial fields have tried to create frameworks and tools to develop PG, but it has been in a separately way. For that reason, this paper describes the design and implementation of a platform that integrates several tools to create and edit game experiences in both fields. This paper focuses the study on the narrative and geolocation applied to close spaces, it is a way of giving an enriched experience to the player. Finally, we present a prototype to validate the platform in the educational context. The game demonstrated the increase in the motivation and learning on students of the first semester of computer engineering about basic knowledge in programming.

Smart Computing and Intelligence

The goal of educational games is to allow players to learn unconsciously while playing. The more a player plays an educational game, the more their learning and their skills can increase. Just like in other games, players in educational games may encounter situations where they feel like they cannot make further progress like passing a level or completing a quest. If players are stuck in an educational game, then they may choose to quit playing the game, which also means that they quit learning. Especially if players quit early, the effect of the educational game will be limited and not last for too long. Therefore, providing players with information on how to improve their performance, such as when and how to play the game, which parts or skill improvement is needed to overcome a challenge and go further in the game, can help to encourage them to play the game more often and continuously. This chapter discusses how the research team integrated a learning analytics dashboard into an educational game so that the players can see their game play performance and habits, and find clues and strategies to improve their in-game performance. The proposed dashboard provides players with a variety of information that will allow them to see how their performance and skills change over time, what their weakness and strengths are and much more. This chapter talks about the design of learning analytics dashboards for educational games and explains the use of the proposed dashboard to help players improve their in-game performance through use cases with 3-month simulated gameplay data.