Challenges of Introducting Serious Games and Virtual Worlds in Educational Curriculum

Abstract

Although the impact that Virtual Worlds and Serious Games can have on learning efficacy and efficiency has been recognized, there is still many open questions related to this issue. Specifically there aren’t guidelines or standards to help practitioners introduce this kind of technologies in a learning environment. In this chapter, the authors describe two experiments involving virtual worlds and serious games in a learning environment. These experiments allowed the authors to understand the real potential of this kind of technology, but also some of the difficulties one can come across. The authors hope that the experiments described in this chapter can serve as a basis for similar experiments done by other practitioners. Finally, some of the pitfalls that should be avoided are described as a set of lessons learnt at the end of the chapter.