Knowledge Representation Schema of Educational Gameplay

Abstract

In educational game design, achieving a balance between engaging gameplay and effective learning objectives is crucial. A well-designed educational game should seamlessly integrate learning content into the game mechanics to ensure players acquire knowledge or skills while enjoying the experience. Various design frameworks have been developed to guide the creation of educational games, helping designers incorporate pedagogical elements into gameplay. However, these frameworks often lack assessment mechanisms that evaluate how well the game facilitates learning. While existing evaluation techniques can assess educational games, they are often extensive and require significant resources. To address this gap, we propose a schema that enables young game designers to analyse their games before committing to a full-scale evaluation. This paper introduces the Ed-WPG schema, designed to analyse educational gameplay as an extension of the WPG schema. WPG schema was developed by us to represent the processes involved in the gameplay and Ed-WPG schema is the extension of the WPG schema to represent what variables need to be analysed at different states of the gameplay.