Alleviating the Entrance to Serious Games by Exploring the Use of Commonly Available Tools

Despite the continuous and abundant growth of the game market the uptake of serious games in education has been quite limited. The uptake of serious games is seriously hampered by the general impression that games require complex technologies and that games are difficult to organise and to embed in the curriculum. Moreover, the education of future teachers and teaching consultants pays limited attention to the use of new technologies. This paper explores to what extent game templates can be designed that can be easily adopted and adapted by individual teachers and that only use commonly available tools in order to leverage the adoption of serious games. It discusses the design and first evaluation of two of such games: Argument, based on a Wiki, and StreetLearn, based on the Google App StreetView. Argument, a text-based game, has been used in a trial by students, in the role of teachers, of a Master of Learning Sciences Programme. Based on the experience of the Wiki game, StreetLearn, was designed. It goes beyond Argument by offering an easy way to include 3D-facilities in a serious game. The initial design of StreetLearn has been reviewed by teachers with a cultural science background and researchers in the field of technology enhanced learning. The results of the studies indicate that both tools are useful instruments that can be operated by the teachers themselves to build game and game-alike educational activities and, additionally, are a valuable step to gain experience with serious games.