A platform for the authoring of educational games

Abstract

An Educational Game Authoring (EGA) tool is a software to assist teachers in the authoring of games. Game authoring can be approached from two different perspectives. The first, where the educator creates a game from scratch, and a second one, where specific game components of an existing game can be configured (edited) by the teacher, abstracting the technical aspects of game development for non-programmer users. Nevertheless, whatever the perspective, the authoring games in an easy way is still a challenge, and even more, there is a lack of works considering educational aspects like Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs), students' learning and playing styles, and learning mechanics. This work takes the second perspective and proposes an EGA platform that although embraces both the game and educational domains, puts the emphasis on the educational one. The platform provides educators with a mean for configuring educational games, and so adapt game's educational content to lessons pacing and students' learning needs. This platform is conceived generic enough to serve those educational games that are adapted to interact with it using a given protocol and communication language. In this paper, we present the architecture of the EGA platform, the communication protocol and the Authoring Description Language (ADL). We show the approach with an example of a maths game.