A Course on Interaction Games and Learning for Interaction Design Students Wolmet Barendregt University of Gothenburg Forskningsgången 6 412 96 Göteborg +46 723062499 Wolmet.barendregt@ait.gu.se Mattias von Feilitzen University of Gothenburg Forskningsgången 6 412 96 Göteborg +46 706732344 Mattias.von.feilitzen@ait.gu.se ABSTRACT The design of serious games involves many different skills and designers of such games can come from many different backgrounds, such as education, computer science, or communication. In this paper, we present the structure, format, and outcomes from a new 8-week course called Interaction, Games, and Learning for master students in the Interaction Design Programme at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Although the course was rather successful in teaching several evaluation models as well as letting students design a serious game and write a paper about it, there are several lessons to be learned, both for improvement of this specific course as well as for other teachers developing similar courses. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.3.2 [Computers and education]: Computer and information science education – computer science education General Terms Design, Human Factors. Keywords Serious game development, education 1. INTRODUCTION Whether you would like to call them ‘educational games’, ‘persuasive games’, or ‘serious games’, all such games share a common intention: they aim at something more than just entertainment. In this paper we will stick to the general term ‘serious games’ to indicate games with such an additional purpose. Designers of serious games may come from many different backgrounds, such as computer science, cognitive science, and pedagogy, and therefore design teams are also likely to consist of a mix of designers and developers with different backgrounds. The challenge that these groups of designers face is to balance the entertainment value with the serious aim of the game. Very few serious games have actually been successful in balancing these factors, and even fewer games have undergone empirical studies in authentic settings in order to prove their effectiveness and efficiency. However, students entering the field of serious games are usually very eager to start creating these games without fully grasping the complexity of this endeavor. We designed the Interaction, Games and Learning course within the master’s programme Interaction Design at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. Students in this master’s programme come from various backgrounds but should have a keen interest in the interaction between humans and digital artifacts. Although all students have followed one or more courses on game design, most of them do not have any formal education related to pedagogy. The course has the following main goals for the students: • Being able to describe a rich set of examples of relevant artifacts, and be able to explain why and how or why not they work toward their given aim. • Being able to describe how current pedagogical theories can be applied in design of relevant artifacts • Being able to discuss the problems and possibilities related to creating and evaluating designs for learning, reflection or change of attitudes or behaviors. • Being able to criticize existing designs in terms of relevant theories and models. • Being able to criticize existing designs in terms of constructive suggestions for improvements. • Being able to design interactive artifacts such as games that aim for learning specific activities or content, reflection or change of attitudes or behaviors. Ultimately, the goal of the course is not to provide students with a stepwise procedure for how to create serious games, but to give them a feeling for the complexity and broadness of the field, as well as the rich research base that this field builds on. 2. BACKGROUND There are relatively few research articles on how to successfully develop a course on serious game design. Two notable exceptions are Brown et al. [1] and Chaffin and Barnes [2]. Brown et al. describe a capstone course for students with a variety of backgrounds, emphasizing the acquisitions of soft skills and the ability to work in multidisciplinary teams in a serious game design course. Chaffin and Barnes describe the setup of their Serious Games Research and Prototyping course emphasizing the students’ ability to design and evaluate a serious game, as well as