Serious game for teaching computing subjects

Abstract

The project objective is to create an effective serious game that teaches computing subjects. A serious game is defined as a video game with the purpose of imparting information and skills that can be externalised and made used of in actual situation. A serious game requires it to be interesting enough to serve as a motivator so players can absorb the knowledge imparted. A balance between incentivising the players to continue and the effectiveness of imparting knowledge need to be established. The project will focus on using interesting narrative to entice user’s motivation to complete the game and measure the effectiveness on using narrative to teach computing subjects. The computing subjects the players will learn is an introduction to a basic probability problem and an abstraction of how logical decisions works in programming and Artificial Intelligence. A survey is conducted to gauge the effectiveness of the game in motivating the players to play the game and the results are inconclusive because the participants’ motivation might be biased due to the nature of the field trial. Further research and refinement of the survey to include more demographic questions are recommended.