A crash course on serious games design and assessment: A case study

The use of serious games in a wide variety of educational settings is gaining popularity, given their ability to engage and motivate learners - particularly the current generation, who have grown up regularly playing video games. However, despite the current “buzz” surrounding serious games, there are many bad examples; this has been attributed to developers supplanting game design without adequate attention to proper instructional design. Given the importance of instructional design, we have developed a tutorial (“minicourse”) that, combines “hands-on” activities and didactic instruction to emphasizes its role in the development and evaluation of serious games. By outlining the developmental process of several example serious games for health professions education, the tutorial also emphasizes the inherent interdisciplinary nature of serious games design and potential issues that may arise when an interdisciplinary team embarks on such a project. Here, we describe the tutorial by providing greater details regarding the “hands-on” activities, the material covered within the tutorial, and attendee perceptions regarding serious games before and after the tutorial. Our goal is to bring awareness to the importance of ensuring a balance between game design and instructional design when developing serious games.