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Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth and employment, but conventional didactical approaches appear ineffective. Effective approaches should include experiential learning from real problems. The serious game under study was developed in the context of entrepreneurship training for construction workers (at European Quality Framework levels 3 to 5). The game offers an immersive scenario with players carrying out authentic tasks in authentic construction business contexts. The article describes important instructional design guidelines applied to assure that tasks and game mechanisms support such more experiential learning. An empirical study (with complete datasets collected from 97 participants across six countries) compared the professional awareness about entrepreneurship before and after gameplay, and analysed computer logging data on game behaviour. We administered a questionnaire after gameplay to inquire about game appreciation. Effective learning from gameplay could indeed be achieved by applying instructional design guidelines. The awareness gain from gameplay was significant (with mean scores on a knowledge test increasing from 45% to 61% correct answers). The games were appreciated (mildly) positive on important game features (flow, authenticity, motivation, usability, learnability and attractiveness). We discuss limitations of the study and recommendations for future research into professional games for awareness raising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introductory Psychology courses in Higher Education lack application of knowledge in solving work‐based problems. We develop and study mini‐games that support a more active and experiential way of learning to increase professional awareness. This paper describes the instructional design and the factors under study: learner control and authenticity. We compared professional awareness and perceived authenticity for the old (without game, n = 130) and new course (with game, n = 197) by administering pre‐ and post‐questionnaires. Participants were allocated to game variants, differing in freedom of assignment order (less or more learner control) and number of sources available (less or more authentic). We computer logged their game actions, and asked them additional questions about gameplay that concerned aspects like motivation, flow, performance, learnability and usability. Both courses improved professional awareness (knowledge gains of 4% for the old and 12% for the new course), but only in the new course with mini‐games this was significant. Students evaluated gameplay and their content as "more than sufficient" to "good." A free order of assignments was found to produce more effective (in‐game) performance, and the provision of more sources was found to improve learnability, authentic learning and appreciations of gameplay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal changes demand educators to apply new pedagogical approaches. Many educational stakeholders feel that serious games could play a key role in fulfilling this demand, and they lick their chops when looking at the booming industry of leisure games. However, current toolkits for developing leisure games show severe shortcomings when applied to serious games. Developing effective serious games in an efficient way requires a specific approach and tool set. This article describes the EMERGO methodology and generic toolkit for developing and delivering scenario-based serious games that are aimed at the acquisition of complex cognitive skills in higher education. Preliminary evaluation results with case developers using the EMERGO methodology and toolkit and with learners using EMERGO cases are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]