Serious Games Usage in Higher Education, Experiences and Guidelines

Abstract

Learning methodologies and experiences have changed over the recent years thanks to the incorporation of digital technology in education, among many of this technologies are Serious Games, however the process of designing and incorporating this technologies is not easy and there are very few available tools, this paper focus is to give some guidelines from real experiences and its results in order to improve the incorporation of this new tools. With modern gadgets and interfaces, now one can initiate learning experiences based on students needs, preferences, and increase the engagement among students, this last period with COVID 19 impacting our institutions and the abrupt incorporation of full online programs and hybrid mode has made us search for new ways to improve the learning experience, young students and millennials are use to playing with games and the results indicates that they are more likely to enjoy learning experiences with them. There has been use of digital simulation environments since many years ago and gamification is more recently, but new technology has made available new ways of developing experiential learning trough games and Edutainment, gamification and more serious games have been recently developed. The empirical results lead to the conclusion that games have a very positive impact in the students learning process in higher education and adds a very good component of experiential teaching to students that can simulate complex environments and decision making through these tools and platforms. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.