Game design and didactic design

80Days envisions a demonstrator base game and different scenarios inspired by Jules Verne’s novel ”Around the world in eighty days” and based on the concept of exploring the (prototypical) topic geography in space and time. Three different scenarios will be realized:

“80Days - around the world” will be the main scenario for the demonstrator and developed across the three development phases. It is targeted for an audience aged 14-16 and will include macro and micro-adaptive features and adaptive storytelling.

“Quest for 80 treasures” will be a smaller, basically aiming at the successful demonstration of realising entirely different games and educational objectives by a single base game/pool of game and educational assets relying on interactive and adaptive digital storytelling. It is targeted for an audience aged 12-14 and will include macro and micro-adaptive features.

“Atlexicon” will demonstrate the re-usability of game-assets and learning resources beyond the game play. It is targeted for an audience aged 12+.

The realization of these scenarios includes two core objectives. First, an appropriate didactic design will be established. This objective includes the identification of learner requirements for the target audience, the identification of related school curricula, as well as the realization of instructional and didactic models to assure psycho-pedagogically sound approaches to game-based learning and related adaptive technologies. Second, closely related to the didactic design, an appropriate game design and design of specific learning and assessment situations will be developed. This includes motivational and immersive narratives, inspiring learning situations, non-invasive interventions on a micro level, and engaging gaming activities. Moreover, this objective includes the design of the base game assets (e.g., visual styles, gaming actions, and virtual environments).

The work of this work package will be under supervision of an educational advisory board. There is also a strong mutual dependency between this work package and the research work packages (WP2). The results and tangible outcomes of research work (i.e., specifications documents) provide a set of requirements for design, for example curriculum structure, amount and type of educational and motivational/emotional interventions, or the size of learning situations. On the other hand, design and development work raises questions and challenges for research and provides it with a set of requirements and constraints (coverage of competence states in learning situations, possibilities for assessing skills and motivational/emotional states, or inclusion of external material). Moreover, design and development provides research with conceptual test-beds for theoretical models.