Browsing by Subject "Serious games"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Open Access
Creation of a serious game for teaching code review: An experience report
(IEEE, 2020-10) Ardıç, Barış; Yurdakul, İrem; Tüzün, Eray
Code review, a manual inspection of source code by developers other than the author, is a frequently used practice for improving code quality in the software development life-cycle. Employing a tool-based review of code changes has become the norm for a wide variety of open source and industrial systems. Despite its widespread usage and importance, software development practices such as code review are often not addressed in typical Software Engineering education. To address this knowledge gap, we propose to use a serious game approach for teaching code review practices. In this study, we define our learning objectives and design a code review serious game along with its companion quizzes. Then we conduct a small preliminary experiment in order to procure feedback. Using the results of the experiment and participant interviews, we improve our game prototype for integration into a software engineering course while optimizing the initial experiment for student's benefit. We document the process, lessons learned and the future directions of the game. The results we gather indicate that the game is ready to be used in a software engineering course setting.
Open Access
CRSG: a serious game for teaching code review
(Association for Computing Machinery, 2020-11) Ünlü, Kaan; Ardıç, Barış; Tüzün, Eray
The application of code review in a development environment is essential, but this skill is not taught very often in an educational context despite its wide usage. To streamline the teaching process of code review, we propose a browser based "Code Review Serious Game" (CRSG) with high accessibility, progressive level difficulty and an evolvable foundation for prospective improvements or changes. The application is built as a serious game to reinforce the learning experience of its users by immersing them in its story and theme, helping them learn while having fun. The effectiveness of the game components are measured with a case study of 132 students of 2 software engineering courses. The promising result of this case study suggests CRSG can indeed be used effectively to teach code review. The demo video for the game can be accessed at https://youtu.be/FLnr3p4bhOg, and CRSG itself at: https://github.com/barisardic/crsg.
Open Access
Developing a scenario-based video game generation framework for computer and virtual reality environments: a comparative usability study
(Springer, 2020-10-31) Surer, E.; Erkayaoğlu, M.; Öztürk, Zeynep Nur; Yücel, F.; Bıyık, E. A.; Altan, B.; Senderin, B.; Oğuz, Zeliha; Gürer, S.; Düzgün, H. Ş.
Serious games—games that have additional purposes rather than only entertainment—aim to educate people, solve, and plan several real-life tasks and circumstances in an interactive, efficient, and user-friendly way. Emergency training and planning provide structured curricula, rule-based action items, and interdisciplinary collaborative entities to imitate and teach real-life tasks. This rule-based structure enables the curricula to be transferred into other systematic learning platforms. Although emergency training includes these highly structured and repetitive action responses, a general framework to map the training scenarios’ actions, roles, and collaborative structures to serious games’ game mechanics and game dialogues, is still not available. To address this issue, in this study, a scenario-based game generator, which maps domain-oriented tasks to game rules and game mechanics, was developed. Also, two serious games (i.e., Hospital game and BioGarden game) addressing the training mechanisms of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNe) domain, were developed by both the game developers and the scenario-based game generator for comparative analysis. Finally, the outcomes of these games were mapped to the virtual reality environment to provide a thorough training program. To test the usability, immersion, presence, and technology acceptance aspects of the proposed game generator’s outcomes, 15 game developer participants tested a complete set of games and answered the questionnaires of the corresponding phenomenon. The results show that although the game generator has higher CPU time and memory usage, it highly outperforms the game development pipeline performance of the game developers and provides usable and immersive games. Thus, this study provides a promising game generator which bridges the CBRNe practitioners and game developers to transform real-life training scenarios into video games efficiently and quickly.
Open Access
Developing a scenario-based video game generation framework for computer and virtual reality environments: a comparative usability study
(Springer, 2021-12) Surer, E.; Erkayaoğlu, M.; Öztürk, Zeynep Nur; Yücel, F.; Bıyık, E. A.; Altan, B.; Şenderin, B.; Oğuz, Zeliha; Gürer, S.; Düzgün, H. Ş.
Serious games—games that have additional purposes rather than only entertainment—aim to educate people, solve, and plan several real-life tasks and circumstances in an interactive, efficient, and user-friendly way. Emergency training and planning provide structured curricula, rule-based action items, and interdisciplinary collaborative entities to imitate and teach real-life tasks. This rule-based structure enables the curricula to be transferred into other systematic learning platforms. Although emergency training includes these highly structured and repetitive action responses, a general framework to map the training scenarios’ actions, roles, and collaborative structures to serious games’ game mechanics and game dialogues, is still not available. To address this issue, in this study, a scenario-based game generator, which maps domain-oriented tasks to game rules and game mechanics, was developed. Also, two serious games (i.e., Hospital game and BioGarden game) addressing the training mechanisms of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNe) domain, were developed by both the game developers and the scenario-based game generator for comparative analysis. Finally, the outcomes of these games were mapped to the virtual reality environment to provide a thorough training program. To test the usability, immersion, presence, and technology acceptance aspects of the proposed game generator’s outcomes, 15 game developer participants tested a complete set of games and answered the questionnaires of the corresponding phenomenon. The results show that although the game generator has higher CPU time and memory usage, it highly outperforms the game development pipeline performance of the game developers and provides usable and immersive games. Thus, this study provides a promising game generator which bridges the CBRNe practitioners and game developers to transform real-life training scenarios into video games efficiently and quickly.
Open Access
Enhancing sustainable behavior via a serious game: the role of biophilic design in real and virtual settings
(2024-09) Özgen Turan, Dilay Seda
Traditional sustainable design efforts often fail to significantly influence human behavior towards sustainability. This gap highlights the need for innovative approaches to encourage environmentally responsible actions in built environments. The aim of this thesis is to explore the potential of biophilic design—an architectural approach that integrates natural elements into built environments—to foster sustainable behaviors. Additionally, the study introduces the use of serious games as a novel tool to simulate real-world scenarios and influence behavior towards sustainability. Serious games can bridge the gap between awareness and action, offering a unique opportunity to reshape attitudes toward sustainability. The research involved 162 participants and was conducted in four distinct environments: two real-world settings, a non-immersive computer environment, and an immersive virtual reality (VR) setting. The study compared behaviors in biophilic and non-biophilic environments, and examined the role of serious games in enhancing sustainable behaviors in these different contexts. Findings reveal that biophilic design in real environments positively influences sustainable behaviors more than non-biophilic environments. Moreover, integrating biophilic design into serious games further enhances these behaviors, especially when experienced in an immersive virtual reality (VR) setting. The study underscores the potential of combining biophilic design with serious games as a powerful strategy to promote sustainable behaviors, offering insights into how digital tools can reconnect individuals with nature and encourage environmentally responsible actions.
Open Access
Save the planets: A multipurpose serious game to raise environmental awareness and to initiate change
(Association for Computing Machinery, 2020-09) Özgen, Dilay Seda; Afacan, Yasemin; Sürer, E.
Serious games address not only entertainment purposes but also the transformations on the behaviors of their players. Serious games have recently been used in several domains, such as education, training, rehabilitation, and defense. The positive impacts of the serious games have been highly emphasized in the literature given their strong elements in motivation, a sense of progress, and a sense of purpose. Thus, this study aims to transfer these well-known strengths of serious games to environmental awareness. To do so, a life simulation-like serious game, Save the Planets, has been developed to nurture, care about, and learn from the Solar system. The game also lets the users create their own customized systems so that the aspirations and priorities of the players could be detected. To measure the immediate impact of the Save the Planets serious game, three different scales —Environmental Identity Scale, Pro Environmental Behavior Scale, and Environmental Action Scale— were applied in the pre-test and post-test evaluations of the 22 participants. The results show that the Save the Planets serious game significantly changes the proenvironmental awareness, and this serious game may be used to better inform and motivate the participants to take long-term actions.
Open Access
Serious game approach to introduce the code review practice
(2021-09) Ardıç, Barış
Code Review is an accepted and widely utilized software engineering practice that focuses on improving code via manual inspections. However, this practice is not addressed adequately in a typical software engineering curriculum. We aim to help address the code review practice knowledge gap between the software engineering curricula and the industry with a serious game approach. We determine our learning objectives around introducing the code review process. In order to realize these objectives, we design, build and test a serious game. We then proceed with a three-step case study with 280 students. We evaluate the results by comparing the students' knowledge and con dence regarding code review before and after the case study, as well as by statistically evaluating how well they did both in the code review quizzes and the game levels themselves. Our analysis indicates that, students have a positive approach regarding playing the serious game while the statistical results show that students improve their knowledge by playing the game. We conclude that our code review serious game had a positive impact on the students and is helpful for introducing the code review process. The game and materials for the case studies are made available online for educators.