Abstract
Digital games have a greater ease of construction of new meanings in a virtual world, more affordable, simple and comprehensible by the students than the real world, and in which the individual differences that occur in the real world tend to fade thanks to the interpretation of a character with different characteristics from the real ones. Role-playing games as serious games show a remarkable power for improving performance with secondary education students through a research conducted applying Classcraft
Introduction
The young people of the currently developed societies have changed their habits of technology consumption in the last decades significantly. The consumption of digital contents and the use of electronic devices have varied to the point that at present the prevalence of consumption of television contents has shifted to online games and through the use of social networks. The consumption of digital games which consumes the hours of the dedication of teenagers oscillates between 49 minutes a day for young Americans (The National Art Education Association, 2016) and 32% of the more than three million teenagers who connect to the Internet in Spain spending more than three hours a day online (National Institute of Statistics, 2016).
On the other hand, the progressive incorporation of new technologies and the Internet to the traditional educational spaces has provoked a growing need to use innovative methodologies in order to achieve a higher impact training particularly in the field of teaching-learning processes in virtual learning environments. Methodologies from video games and online gaming have become an increasingly present innovation in education, in what is known as gamification techniques or serious games use. Different studies show that ICT users and students today demand new and different opportunities for interaction in their learning experiences, among which they emphasize the chance to connect with other users to express and share their opinions in the school environment in a double scope of cooperation and competition, demanding an education that is not only relevant but useful in the real world, because this generation especially wants to develop their creativity using the tools of their age (Prensky, 2010).
It is therefore possible to argue that the only way to ensure success in the formative process is through our ability to adapt to how subjects learn in the new digital age (Freitas & Jarvis, 2007), and therefore, it is necessary to adapt the training methodologies used to the new ways of learning from the new generations of the so-called “digital natives”, those generational cohorts born from 1990. And this is a generation of apprentices who demand a new type of innovative techniques (Krichen, 2007). This is especially related to the theses arguing that teaching/learning contexts are more effective when students find the relationship between the classroom activity and the contents of the subjects and the context that is given in their daily life (Johnson, 2002). In other words, the incorporation into the classroom of something as familiar as an electronic device for a young teenager will make learning much more meaningful for him. Hence the elements of visual language act as the main motivational stimuli, particularly through the development of multimedia content.
Serious games and visual learning
The games in digital leisure environments can be defined as technological resources particularly belonging to information technology domain, which allow the development of recreational activities and entertainment, but in their application are intended for use in education terms. The main definition of so-called serious games is that they are distinguished from digital games because their main purpose is educational, and not pure entertainment (Michael & Chen, 2005; Pivec et al., 2003). The adoption of digital games under an educational purpose means to situate the students to solve problems or to make decisions as well as to check how the result of the game varies according to their actions or decisions, in an environment in which they must interact with other players and discuss or negotiate the steps to make to improve their social skills (Green & Bavelier, 2003).
The use of virtual environments where we attend a simulated implementation that completes the teaching-learning cycle with the implementation of knowledge and skills learned has been shown as one of the most innovative, motivating and proven methodologies to be highly effective in training. Their employment in the professional field has become more frequent, especially in the training for handling vehicles of all kinds, armament, heavy or precision machinery, etc. However, this educational software is increasingly more frequent for use on the Internet or in new fields of continuous training. In this first line, different studies focused on a functional point of view about the impact of the use of games on the sensory and intellectual capacities or the impact of video games on improving selective attention skills (Gee, 2004). Authors like Prensky (2010) and Gee (2004) headed this theoretical movement, which in the Anglo-Saxon field has gathered around the theories of digital game-based learning (DGL) (Malone, 1981). These and other authors refer to a number of elements already mentioned by Thomas Malone (1981): the challenge, the fantasy and the curiosity aroused by the users for this type of leisure products (Beer, 2000; Liu et al., 2014; Shrage, 1999).
The sensory mechanisms that stimulate these imaginative and curious elements operate essentially on the basis of visual language. As Witteveen (2009) points out, Visual Learning comprises any rich language that uses images of any kind – including mental images – by the constitution of a scenario that can alter the time, the distance, the places and the spaces in a metaphorical and narrative language. All these are characteristic elements of the video games, particularly those that by the performance of role figures, associate certain characteristics or characters that the player/apprentice can identify with.
In other words, using components or visual language of the role play, serious games designers can develop meaningful learning contexts (Zimmermann et al., 2007) that help students to process new information that makes sense in connection with their own world, their memory or their life experiences. In this sense, the visual element of serious games introduces a multiplier element in all the areas of innovation inherent to digital learning which George and Serna (2011) classified according to the following distribution of learning environments:
Behaviourism, when it comes to analysing the effect of the teachings to provoke changes in the observable actions and in the behaviour of the students. Constructivism, when studying learning activities through which students build new ideas or concepts based on their previous knowledge. Situational learning, when it comes to promoting learning in real contextual and cultural environments. Collaborative learning, when focusing on the social interactive character that facilitates new technologies. Non-formal education and lifelong learning, theoretical models that analyze the elements related to the learning in extracurricular scenarios and outside the formal curriculum. Resources for teaching, which focuses on the analysis of new technologies as supports to teaching and facilitators of teacher management or coordination of support resources.
In this paper, we are in alignment with investigati ons such as those developed by Freitas (2008) in which she relates role-playing games with the creation of virtual worlds to conclude that the games that best adapt to specifications of a serious game for a school environment – except those for skills training such as the ones in the field of medicine or vehicle pilot simulators – are role-playing.
Our starting point is the hypothesis that the visual elements in the design of the role play games show a potential ability to perform metaphorical evocations that associate the role of the apprentice to a fictional character whose characteristics are intrinsically attractive for the player/trainee and they include strength, wisdom, honesty, reliability and even physical appeal with a visual-based characterization. In this sense, the characters of male and female warriors or elder magicians, amazing monsters, are images of great visual strength in the adolescent group, who recognizes the extraordinary appeal they pose as a stimulus to their imagination.
Case study with secondary level students: Methodology
Through an empirical study that had supported a doctoral research (García, 2016), we tried to analyse the effect of visual language plays in the improvement of the learning process through the use of serious games in the classroom. By highlighting different aspects directly related to visual learning, we will show how self-identification with idealized images and fantastic environments plays a powerful multiplier factor in the cognitive and attitudinal stimuli in the student.
This research forms part of a descriptive, qualitative and longitudinal study with descriptive measures and correlations of ex-post facto type since it has studied a group of students of the first year of high school. This type of design is suited to our purpose which is to analyse how Serious Games Based Learning optimizes the teaching-learning process and to what extent visual learning contributes to this.
The experience on which this research is based has been carried out with a group of thirty students enrolled in the subject of Philosophy pertaining to a high school First Course in the academic year 2015–2016. The age of these students varied between 16 and 18 years old, with 11 women and 19 men. It is interesting to highlight, for the research purposes, that 53.3% of these students had not repeated any course before, while one-third were repeaters and 13.3% twice.
Thus, the research posed the challenge of using a serious game essentially for motivating students. Accordingly, a previous bibliographic review of teaching experiences with serious games based on role performance was carried out. This search led to discarding many games that, although having a very specific educational or formative purpose, forgot the essential aspects of the game (fun, winning, losing, etc.). Some games were ruled out when they showed a low-component visual role. These included popular video games of the last decade as well as games designed to train certain professions like doctors, cops, pilots or waiters. The third step was to discard games with poor visual language, i.e., those consisting of a simple digital presentation, with either dynamic or traditional contents, but with no potential to evoke a visual scenario in the student and engage with his/her creativity for more than a few minutes.
After the search for a serious game that fulfilled the minimum requirements that ensure its application and development in a class of first-year philosophy, it was concluded that the software ideal that enabled a gaming experience like the one that was being sought was Classcraft
Another reason for the choice of Classcraft
This kind of games have a strong aesthetic and visual component inspired by the language of the comic. It also has a certain narrative of their adventures together with a detailed visual language in the definition and properties of the characters in the game that the student should identify with. Like any role-playing game, it is a game in which it is not necessary to have a game board (as it does with other strategy games which are similar to those of role-playing), but the essence of the game is the representation of a character that acts or intervenes, usually as a team, in different situations of the development of a story narrated by a director – Master of the game. This type of games can be developed live or in person but the application of communication technologies has allowed its popularization through the Internet.
Following the work of Sanchez et al. (2017) from the analysis of two research projects related to the application of Classcraft
What Classcraft
In order to provide contents to the game, it was decided to make a classification of learning activities, reinforcement and instrumental ones, which in turn could be developed in digital media (Web applications or mobile devices), analogical or a mixture of both. On the other hand, it was necessary to ensure that the gaming experience was rich enough in contents to develop the curricular ones established in the programming of the philosophy subject.
The results of the ratings for each evaluation has been grouped into three sections: first is a diary where students recorded (with date and description), the different activities of the pupil with indicating if they are tasks that have been corrected by the teacher; the second section collects the scores of the planned tests for each evaluation period (test, dissertation, Practice Test, reading); and the third is the evaluation of a series of transversal competencies such as ability to relate contents, critical sense, coherent expression, proper use of theoretical concepts, use of appropriate concepts and other formal aspects related to written expression. The valuation of these competencies is not carried out by the realization of any specific test, but is based on the tests that have been qualified. In other words, each test is valued in two different ways at least.
On the other hand, and regarding the evaluation during the period of application of the serious game methodology, data related to each type of individual score were included in our analysis: the experience points (XP) mainly concerned the accomplishment of specific tasks, the health points (HP) are those that the player loses when an event is not favourable to him or when the player has not done some task. Using the own language of the game, these elements represent the player’s health level because without these points, the apprentice “die”. In the same way, we included data linked to the “gold coins” which are used as an extra reward for the tasks successfully performed by the student and that have previously been determined by the Master.
In order to systematically determine the perception that the students of this research group had about the differences between the period of gamification and the previous one which would provide more relevant information than the mere statistical data on absenteeism or qualifications, a questionnaire with open, closed and valuation questions was designed, which was passed to the students at the end of the playing experience (at the end of the course). The questionnaire was divided into eight sections, in which students were asked to assess the following factors:
The degree of satisfaction with the course, Living together in the classroom, Academic performance, Appraisals (difficulty, demand, work, effort, attention, participation, cooperation), The incidence of the game in interest, attitude, and behaviour, Impact of information and communication technologies, Performance, Final Opinion
Each quantitative assessment was accompanied by a request for qualitative valuation. In addition to these results, we analysed the behaviours of students through social networks since they shared their ratings through for example Twitter
Results
On a qualitative level, students showed a significant increase in their levels of motivation and stimulation through the presentation of bold ideas, spontaneous creativity and, in particular, generating optimism towards the ability to carry out changes in their social environment. To do this, students’ participation in virtual scenarios has been shown to be powerful for the generation and management of expectations, beginning with the will of the participants to learn. Especially significant is the effect on the group of students with the poorest previous school performance and those who repeated the course for the second time.
It is remarkable how the capture of the students’ attention multiplies both their interest and their concentration. Thanks to the interactive participation, the “shame and shyness” that hinders the active participation during the lectures was overcome. Through this participation, more points of view were obtained, particularly qualitative and the experience of the educational relationship between teacher and pupil was enriched. 78.18% of participating students indicated that there was an improvement relative to class participation after the gaming experience. These data reflected the paradoxical effect in this group of students of philosophy, a complicated subject in general, where the participation of students is always hard. The explanatory variables for this reside in the difficulty of the subject matter and with the fact that it is a matter that they had not studied before, on which they had no previous experience and which caused them embarrassment. This is because, as discussed above, one of the benefits of role-playing is that players can overcome their shyness and insecurity by interpreting a role, and therefore have a better experience of their participation in the class.
Furthermore, the motivation of the students improved significantly, with 81.8% of them being highly motivated after the gaming experience, compared to 40% that were motivated before the gaming experience. First of all, we found that the students ascribed their demotivation before the game to the alleged difficulty of the subject which causes a low academic performance and is the root cause of abandonment and discouragement. The students were thus immersed in a vicious circle: not reaching the expectations led them to a low level of motivation which in turn affected the level of effort and commitment to the subject matter. However, when students were asked how they felt after playing Classcraft
In this sense, our results corroborated the effects observed in the earlier studies mentioned above. The variables related to the intrinsic challenges of the game are reinforced with the adoption and identification with a role, and there is an additional reinforcement in intensity derived from the sensations of uncertainty, feedback, fantasy, cooperation, and competition.
Other intrinsic strengths of the game dynamics are related to the language required both to refer to the different tasks and the evaluation of their performance which affects the students’ attitude. In other words, the task consisting of “Find a philosophical text” with certain characteristics becomes in amazing task of “The search for the magic Scroll”. While looking for a text is boring, however looking for a magic scroll is exciting and fun. In the same way “To argue with another student in the class” can also be boring, whereas “Overcome a challenge, a duel or A Great challenge” is undoubtedly more fun.
Preserving the language of the role-playing game, which implies a fantasy world, enabled us to move the boring things to a context in which everything is attractive and interesting. However, it is absolutely essential to the success of the game that messages and the tasks have a minimum of internal coherence within that world (characters, epic language, etc.). In the case of alumnus diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) it should be noted that both the behavioral problems associated with hyperactivity and the problems for the follow-up of the class due to the attention deficit syndrome improved substantially. The experience of playing enhanced the concentration in specific and not very extensive tasks, with the possibility of participating more in small groups and generally in a much more cooperative and interactive way. Once it is achieved that students begin to work on a regular basis in the classroom through the game, behaviour problems decrease and even disappear while their academic results improve in a very meaningful way.
In this sense, 45.45% of students are situated in the range of positive variation that implies improved attention in general. In order to discuss this issue, it should be noted that the following change occurs in the class dynamics: the distribution of times and tasks is re-distributed in the sense of dedicating more time in class to agile tasks at individual or group level, with an immediate correction of tasks (whenever possible). Once priority is given in the class to this type of activity, with activities devoted to the exposure of contents, in addition being shorter, the contents are interspersed with the activities posed through the game. In other words, it takes advantage of the excitement provoked by the very situation of the game in which the level of attentional arousal is maximum so that the students pay more attention to the teacher’s explanations. One drawback detected is that sometimes, especially when random factors of the game lead to a negative result which assumes that the player loses score in some of the game’s parameters, his attitude can be frustrating. At first glance, this result could be unfavourable in order to maintain the focus on the task. However, these random circumstances constitute in themselves an opportunity for the student to develop social and civic competences in the sense that his level of frustration should be managed in an adequate and civic way to the social situation of the game.
The type of random events that can cause frustrating responses can arise during the game itself randomly, however, the teacher is knowledgeable of the events that are likely to provoke that reaction. This gives the teacher enough leeway to be able to anticipate an appropriate response to the student’s reaction, turning this into an opportunity to teach him to regulate his social emotions. If on the contrary, the teacher was in the development of the class with that type of reaction on the part of the pupil, the improvisation would hardly produce that opportunity of learning.
In front of the arcade-type video games, the simulation and recreation games of virtual worlds allow a more complex disposition of the subjects thanks to the visual component that stimulates the active adoption of a protagonist role in the learning process. It increases the level of involvement in tasks, concentration, linkage and, in general, enhances the skills of the player. In addition, in this type of scenario, students tend to devote more time to answering issues and this results in greater performance in response (García, 2016).
Like other studies on role-playing games, we agree with the incidence of this type of products on the attitudinal level of learning, facilitating the acquisition of knowledge and school performance. Haris and Sugito (2015) have developed a questionnaire based on the modified model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) stating that the factors that affect users of ClassCraft
Regarding visual design in the configuration and use of serious games, this element represents an essential component to maximize the player’s experience and achieve educational goals, including engagement and motivational effects through effective visual language. In the classical work of Zida (2005), he warns of the generational change that the millennials, mainly the generations born from the 1980s, who grew familiar with the visual language of the video games, introduced in the designers of Virtual reality products. Specifically, he draws attention to the need to apply what it calls “human performance engineering” or a user-centric design, particularly from a pedagogical and educational optics as far as serious game design is concerned. Dickey (2005) points out that this educational design focused in the user must include three elements such as the design of the trajectory that follows the player from his own position or point of view, the narrative function and the design of interaction methods. The visual design has a central weight in the design of the user’s perspective.
To this end, in our study, we have found evidence that the visual component has a multiplier effect on the user so that the familiarity with images and visual languages as those coming from the world of comic or cinematography represent an essential factor in inducing engagement with the apprentices. The students participating in the experience responded warmly to the possibility of identifying with attractive figures visually and associated with elements of strength, intelligence, and power, setting an incentive for the performance of such roles.
The visual aspects of narrative design are also important, particularly in games where there are visual action components such as arcade-style games (Green & Bavelier, 2003). But they also facilitate the induced fantasy if they lead to a sustained tension in the students, who wait with interest the evolution of the history present in the narration (Ahissar & Hochstein, 2000). In this sense, Schell (2014) calls “Transmedia worlds” or fantasy scenarios that in the design of games facilitate the engagement of the players with the narrative of the games, read Starwars or World of Warcraft
Conclusions
The design of game-based learning instruments requires applying a methodology that tries to ensure their success. A game can be built with a huge potential but if it is badly designed, it can be underutilized, when it does not turn out to be a failure if the recipients cannot or do not want to use it. George and Serna (2011) have proposed a methodological model for the successful design of this type of tools.
First of all, the need to determine a pedagogical approach. Often, it has been the case that design teams have been more guided by engineers or computer scientists, experts in communications or digital content, who have obviated the pedagogical requirements that must underlie these types of tools whose primary purpose is educational. The selection of serious games for use in school environments should take into account a previous analysis of the games to be used, where the visual component is essential so that it is attractive for the player/trainee. In our case, the imagery of the transmedia world of Warcraft
Secondly, it is necessary to situate the tasks that make up the game in the real world, that is, students must be able to discover meaningful relationships between the abstract ideas of the game and its practical application in the real world, either through the process of discovery, reinforcement or relationship through concepts. The effort to adapt the narrative language of a subject as philosophy to the language of challenges and Classcraft’s own clashes results in a greater capacity to stimulate students’ interest in understanding the aspects of philosophical theories.
Thirdly, it is necessary to elaborate the details and incorporate forms of social, cultural, physical or psychological experiences that from the pedagogical point of view, achieve the desired learning outcomes. The choice of roles and a careful visual characterization of the same in the form of warriors or magicians facilitate associating profiles with which the player longs to identify.
In the fourth and last place, the location or the map of activities and concepts offered by the game should be offered to the user through an interface in such a way that it is possible to evaluate how learning becomes effective in the real world.
To complete the elements of success in designing a serious game, Juul (2005) suggests six necessary elements in addition:
Rules, allowing the player to understand and align their behavior correctly. Variable and quantifiable results, so that the player’s attention is permanent and does not decay. Values assigned to the results, so that there is a predictable and stimulating reward system at the same time. Effort on the part of the player in order to achieve better results, reducing as much as possible the random factor. The linkage between the player and the results, so that they perceive that they are personal achievements. The possibility of negotiating the consequences of the activities.
In particular, the design of the game is more effective when the objectives of the same are provided as clearly and explicitly as possible to the student (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Johnson & Wiles, 2003; Pagulayan et al., 2003) and the rule provision is early and the clearest possible (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005).
The second essential feature in the game, after the clarity in the objectives, is the return or “feedback” (Liu et al., 2014) which helps students understand their performance in the game and provides them with information about their successes and failures. Different studies have highlighted the desirability of an immediate response to players’ actions in the development of the game (Desurvire et al., 2004) as well as throughout the development of the game.
The third element to have in consideration is the challenge (Malone & Lepper, 1987; Rouse, 2005; Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005), being the variable associated with skills that you want to work through the game. Only if the challenge is correctly raised, will we obtain a performance in competitions that we propose.
The fourth element is relative to the control, the margin that the player has to introduce changes in the game environment, i.e., whether you can choose your profile or characteristics of your avatar, the type of virtual context in which it is developed to the scenery, etc. (Johnson & Wiles, 2003).
Fifthly, we must cater to the fantasy-related element, as a powerful feature of serious games, which has been demonstrated to engage students and obtain higher instructional-type performances (Iuppa & Borst, 2007; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Parker & Lepper, 1992).
We can conclude with other studies that capacities related to perception, attention and memory can be improved through stimulation caused by information and feelings transmitted by this type of games (Williamson & Sandford, 2005). This type of motivating environment presents advantages in front of traditional passive learning environments, in particular by reducing in the student, the fear of failure and of facing the challenges of learning, increasing self-confidence and, in addition, its perceived competence and effectiveness (Michael & Chen, 2005).
Particularly, visual language reinforces this ability by its recourse to creative language. Like Freitas (2008), we believe that digital games have a greater ease of construction of new meanings in a virtual, more affordable, simple and comprehensible world by the students than the real world, and in which the individual differences occurring in the real world fade thanks to the interpretation of a character with different characteristics from the real ones.
Likewise, a central element in the support of games is the language. If human beings fundamentally inhabit a symbolic, linguistically mediated world, the territories of the games are precisely, the alternative universes that the language allows us to build, that is, to imagine. The essential question regarding the pedagogical and academic use of these imagined worlds reside in the fact that Friedlander (2010) states:
“they combine fantasy with deeply held and emotionally charged visions of life; they offer situations that express basic human experiences; and they bring together the basic elements of story – plot, action, and spatial setting – in rich and surprising ways.” (p. 125).
Therefore, the language involved in the development of the game has been taken care of especially according to two different objectives. On the one hand, the language, together with the characters, the aesthetics, helps to maintain the illusion of the game, the fantasy. On the other hand, it helps in a very difficult aspect to achieve with traditional methodologies, such as the mobilization by the student of deep emotional resources, linked to the experience of the daily life.
Again, the differences between the students which become difficulties for learning in most cases can become a positive gamified environment for each student and, therefore, for the whole classroom, which is achieved through proper planning and a coherent narrative, sustaining the illusion of the game.
In short, the success of a serious game when connecting with the apprentice/player is determined in large part, by the quality of visual design and the ability to evoke imaginary worlds where the imaginative role of the player is capable of being projected in an attractive way.