Search

There is a shift in education towards adopting pedagogical approaches that nurture deeper learning. Educators recognise that effective and active approaches to teaching are more closely associated with deeper learning. These active approaches aim to develop higher order skills, encouraging learners' critical thinking and decision-making as well as enhancing their capacity to be agile, flexible and adaptable. Among those active approaches stand serious games, which are powerful learning environments that are seen as an emergent and engaging new way of experiment situations and construct knowledge. Serious games, in the form of role-play simulations, are scenario-based games that are used to simulate real life situations. Although serious games and simulations have been widely used in serving educational purposes, there is little evidence on their use in achieving deeper learning. In addition, there is lack of guidelines or a framework for designing serious games to support learners achieve deep learning. This paper proposes a theoretical framework, based on Bloom's educational model for Mastery Learning, which illustrates the design of instructional process adapted for serious games using empathy and creativity as an approach of designing serious games for achieving deeper learning. It describes an approach of evaluating this framework by designing a serious game focusing on raising awareness about domestic violence and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]