Proposal for a New Tool to Evaluate a Serious Game

Abstract

The current enthusiasm of generations of students for video games and the marked interest of training institutions for the use of playful strategies, which facilitate learning, has encouraged the development and use of formative games called Serious Games. The main aim behind these games is not to substitute the traditional training mode, but to complement it by making the learner benefit from the interactivity and ergonomics of the graphical interfaces offered by a SG. So far, much research work has focused on the benefits that SGs can bring to a training envi-ronment. However, little has been done in terms of evaluating an SG, not as a training tool but as the outcome of a development project of a tool meant for use in a learning context. The purpose of this paper is to propose an evaluation tool of a SG designed in terms of four necessary dimensions that a SG should have in order to fulfill the task for which it was designed. These four dimensions are represented in terms of measurement criteria and prioritized according to the Fuzzy-AHP method « Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process ». This model was tested on an SG validated by an educational committee and used by biology students in Hassan II University, Ben M'Sik Faculty of Sciences. The results obtained show the quality and relevance of the evaluation of the proposed tool.