Mini-games for entrepreneurship in construction: Instructional Design and effects of the TYCON game

Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth and employment, but conventional didactical approaches appear ineffective. Effective approaches should include experiential learning from real problems. The serious game under study was developed in the context of entrepreneurship training for construction workers (at European Quality Framework levels 3 to 5). The game offers an immersive scenario with players carrying out authentic tasks in authentic construction business contexts. The article describes important instructional design guidelines applied to assure that tasks and game mechanisms support such more experiential learning. An empirical study (with complete datasets collected from 97 participants across six countries) compared the professional awareness about entrepreneurship before and after gameplay, and analysed computer logging data on game behaviour. We administered a questionnaire after gameplay to inquire about game appreciation. Effective learning from gameplay could indeed be achieved by applying instructional design guidelines. The awareness gain from gameplay was significant (with mean scores on a knowledge test increasing from 45% to 61% correct answers). The games were appreciated (mildly) positive on important game features (flow, authenticity, motivation, usability, learnability and attractiveness). We discuss limitations of the study and recommendations for future research into professional games for awareness raising.