A Modeling Language to Describe Reusable Learning Processes to Achieve Educational Objectives in Serious Games

Abstract

Serious games combine motivational aspects of games with pedagogical approaches to enhance their players’ learning performance. A major challenge in serious game development is the proper alignment of concepts coming from the two domains, game development and pedagogy. As a consequence, creating successful serious games is difficult for single individuals only well versed in one domain, but not knowing about the other. Existing approaches focus on formalizing learning processes within individual games, but are incapable of making the instructor’s knowledge reusable in other serious games. To address this issue, we present a modeling language to capture pedagogical knowledge in reusable learning processes that enable game developers to create serious games that support imparting educational objectives. As a result, our language helps game developers to integrate educational approaches into serious games. The paper illustrates the model and structure of the language.