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HEIndividual fellowship2022–2024

EduGames · Play to learn: ludic video games and interactive experiences to improve critical and computational thinking skills

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2022-11-01 → 2024-10-31
EU contribution
€188,590
Participants
1
Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Results in brief

Play to learn: ludic video games and interactive experiences to improve critical and computational thinking skills

The EduGames project tackles a problem that is becoming more and more prevalent in our fast-paced, digital world: the ability to think critically in the face of disinformation. Critical Thinking skills, such as understanding cause and effect, following logical steps, reading, and spotting misinformation, are essential for navigating the complex information we encounter every day. By practicing these skills, people become better equipped to engage with the world around them, actively participate in society, and make informed decisions. While schools play a role in building these skills, people outside formal education may also need support. This project aims to bridge that gap by developing video games that are engaging, entertaining, and educational, giving people of all ages a chance to strengthen these essential skills while playing. In line with Europe’s digital strategy to combat disinformation, the project has a clear mission: to help individuals recognize and question false information. Disinformation, or weaponized misinformation, has become a major concern over the past few decades, and this project contributes to countering it by designing entertaining games that also teach. With video games being one of the most popular forms of entertainment, they offer a powerful way to reach a wide audience and make learning enjoyable, accessible, and engaging. This approach is designed to impact a broad range of people, from teens to adults, and help build a society that thinks critically and responsibly in our information-saturated world. The project has two key objectives: 1. creating and testing skill-building games: with the help of experts from education, game design, and game research, we aim to create video games that are first and foremost entertainment products, while ensuring that they contain sound educational material delivered in a way that can be acquired and used by the players; 2. documenting the uniquely multi-disciplinary design and development process to produce a set of guidelines to aid the development of video games with educational focus and entertainment ambitions. By combining education with entertainment, this project seeks to build a toolkit of design principles that other game developers can use, opening up new opportunities for creating fun and meaningful games. The project has the potential for far-reaching impact: as more developers use these principles to create games, the public gains greater access to playful experiences that make learning skills for life both accessible and fun. This initiative will contribute to building a more critically aware and engaged society, preparing people to meet the demands of today’s digital world in an informed and empowered way.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This project investigates the use of primarily ludic video games and interactive experiences aimed at transferring skills within the Critical and Computational Thinking skill sets – e.g., literacy, numeracy – using gameplay as opposed to presentation. This niche of products is under-researched, compressed between serious games and purely ludic games, and suffers from a lack of systematic design and evaluation guidelines. The main objective is to define a framework of design and evaluation principles for the development of video games and interactive experiences with education and skill transfer in mind, and to explore the role of ludic technologies in education. I will design, develop, and experimentally evaluate a series of video games and interactive experiences based on specific skills drawn from the Critical and Computation Thinking skill sets. I will engage with domain experts in the chosen skills to identify the best ways of transferring these skills through gameplay. The design process and evaluation methodologies will contribute to the the definition of a framework of design and evaluation principles (main objective) which I will publish at the end of the project. Throughout the project, I will publish results from the individual design and experimental phases. I will create a network of industrial partners – i.e., video game developers, museums and cultural institutions – for commercial exploitation and potential future collaboration. This project is relevant because it addresses the social problem of improving numeracy and literacy skills through the frameworks of Critical and Computational Thinking, which is part of the EU’s policy in the field of adult learning. The use of ludic video games and interactive experiences broadens the target audience to include younger demographics, thus potentially delivering a larger impact that could have long-term effects on an engaged individual’s education and well-informed participation in public life.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA · PadovaCoordinatorItaly

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union