Developing a Meta-Model for Serious Games in Higher Education

This short paper presents a preliminary meta-model for educational games. A meta-model facilitates the development of high-quality, engaging, educational games because it explicitly ties knowledge requirements, transferable skills and course outcomes to game production. Our meta-model is designed to be transferable across curricula, as it modularizes domain specific bodies of knowledge (BOK), a learning taxonomy (e.g., Bloom´s), and skill based challenges. The model situates learning opportunities in a plotline wherein the student-player advances by succeeding against non-player adversaries. Knowledge-based challenges framed by a learning taxonomy develop the transferable skills required by international accreditation standards and provide feedback to both the player and the faculty member. Situating assessment challenges in an immersive game environment makes them more engaging and imaginative than typical on-line tests or assignments. Here, we present our meta-model tailored for educational game development in software engineering education.