Maximum number of students: 24; subscription policy: first-come, first-served

Serious games are digital games whose primary objective is not entertainment; they are designed for objectives related to training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication. Despite their increasing popularity, the design, engineering, and production of serious games still lead to many questions and uncertainties, for instance about their effectiveness.

In this seminar we provide an introduction to the research domain of serious games, explore their application domains, and examine the key activities that concern the creation of a serious game following principled design and evaluation.

The intended learning outcomes for a student that successfully attends the seminar are the following:

• Being aware of what serious games are and their main application domains
• Being able to critically assess weak and strong components of an existing serious game in a principled way
• Knowing state-of-the-art guidelines for designing effective serious games
• Being able to analyze the literature in a specific sub-field

The seminar aims to deliver these outcomes through an interactive and discussion-oriented course. In addition to actively participating in the lectures, the students—organized in teams of two—are  expected to conduct the following activities:

• Organize and conduct an expert evaluation of an existing serious game
• Redesign (parts of) the game to improve it, using knowledge and theory from the literature
• Conduct an evaluation of the re-designed game that provides evidence on the effectiveness of the chosen re-design
• Present their work to the rest of the class, also through a final posters session
• Study a specific sub-field of serious gaming and give a lecture to the class

• Lectures and guest lectures
• Presentations by students