After doing some reading, research and reflecting on serious games this week I’ve narrowed down my list to 5 factors. The components of serious games that I have found include:
- Have specified learning goals and objectives – If teachers are going to use class time to have their students play serious games then the games must have learning goals and objectives to justify the time spent playing them.
- Personalized learning styles – A serious game must be able to customize a learning path to be exactly what a student needs at any time in their educational career. Also if a computer can gauge the level of the player and cater to their learning style a student will be more successful. There is just not enough time in the day to fill in all of the gaps that each of our students have developed over the years, games can analyze the standard that the individual student is missing and help to recover those specified tasks so that they are successful. Today’s children have grown up with technology at their fingertips and their learning styles are quite different than their parents. Technology is just an extension of their everyday lives and this is often how they learn best.
- Immediate feedback – To keep the students attention, immediate and frequent feedback must be given to the student to let them know how they are doing. This feedback will help the player make decisions on the rest of the game, motivate them to keep trying their best and influence the learning process.
- Challenging on many levels and appropriate for the player – To keep students interested, serious games need to be challenging but attainable for the individual playing the game. “Moderate levels of complexity create intermediate levels of cortical arousal, which is both optimally pleasing to most interpreters and maximally efficient for learning in most instances.” (Husain)
- Teach us to think and solve problems – Serious games should cover real world problems, these problems not only are interesting but can teach life long lessons. “Video games have the power to change us, games can teach us to think and solve problems.” (Thomas) Rote memorization and spitting out facts do not belong in serious games “they should be games and not just drill and practice.” (Husain)
References:
Click to access layla_husain_master_thesis_2011.pdf
http://edreach.us/2014/01/18/edgamer-126-gamifi-ed-empowers-students/
http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=etcpress
kerigray2010 
I agree with many of the elements that you think a serious game should have. I found it difficult to limit the number of components. Having immediate feedback is so important in education so I agree that serious games need to have immediate feedback. Also, the challenge of games needs to vary. Game designers need to create games that will challenge every type of player. I also thought it was important to have a character or identity for players to choose, I think that adds them enjoying and relating to the game. But there are a lot of good recommendations that I have found on your blog and others.
Thanks for the comment. I too found it hard to limit the number of elements that a serious game should have. I feel that having immediate feedback is one of the most important. I find that with my lower level math students they need that constant feedback that yes they are doing the problem right or the encouragement to keep trying. I think all of the elements I listed are elements of a good teacher so it would be appropriate to have these elements in my list for serious games.
I have never thought of them as being characteristics of good teachers, but that really makes sense. Very interesting to go back and read them again and think about teachers.