Abstract
The collection and analysis of analytics incorporated into serious games provides researchers with objective data on player behavior related to serious game design elements and learning. Such analytics offer insights about play-learners engagement that is not possible to capture through traditional techniques. Visualization of learning behavior data can allow for a comparison between the pedagogical intent of the game design and the play-learners actual behavior within the serious game. This paper describes the use of game-play logs to identify pathways through gaming content in a serious game app for literacy improvement. The paper describes the technical aspects of processing game-play logs and their transformation into visualizations, and considers how these visualizations can be used to explore play-learner behavior in relation to the pedagogical intent of activities embedded in the serious game app.
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Notes
- 1.
F# is ranked #36 in the TIOBE Index. See http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index [last access 10/05/2016], an index of rankings of the popularity of different programming languages.
- 2.
See http://martinfowler.com/articles/collection-pipeline/ [last access 11/5/2016].
- 3.
Source d3.js bubble chart example from https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063269 [last access 11/5/2016].
- 4.
The Apostrophe Power app is available for free download on the Apple iTunes App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android). See http://dice.newcastle.edu.au/resources.html.
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Acknowledgements
The development of the Apostrophe Power appFootnote 4 was supported in part by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education, University of Newcastle, Australia (Grant #185826036) and the Literacy App Project (HEPP National Priority Pool Grant #188626554). Thanks also to Jeffrey Julian and Samsung for equipment support.
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Smith, S.P., Hickmott, D., Southgate, E., Bille, R., Stephens, L. (2016). Exploring Play-Learners’ Analytics in a Serious Game for Literacy Improvement. In: Marsh, T., Ma, M., Oliveira, M., Baalsrud Hauge, J., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9894. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45841-0_2
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