Abstract

Education’s gamification has represented an opportunity to boost students’ interaction, motivation and participation. ARG (Alternate Reality Games) offer a new highly immersive tool that can be implemented in educational achievements. One of the strongest points of these immersive games is based on applying the sum of students participating efforts and resources (so called collective intelligence) for problem resolution. In addition, ARG combine online and offline platforms a factor that improves the realism on the game experience. In this regard, this present work aims to summarise ARG potentialities, limitations and challenges of these immersive games in higher and further education context. In terms of methodology, this research draws from an appropriate theoretical corpus and, analyses the educational potential of AGR that, in fields like marketing or corporate communication, has already started successfully, but it has still not been studied in depth in education. This study compiles, also, best practices developed in several subjects and academic degrees all around the world and not easily traceable. It concludes that, given the antecedents, potentialities and the exposed analysis, the possibility of incorporating alternate reality games into the university teaching practice in the frame of an educational strategy that determines its aims and more suitable system of evaluation, has to be considered.

Abstract

Video games are useful learning tools in different fields. This work seeks to evaluate, through a self-developed video game, their usefulness as a learning tool for the information literacy of undergraduate students. The videogame “The last exam” was developed after the analysis of 1,639 user queries registered over 2 years at the Complutense University Library, and aims to answer queries common to other university libraries. To evaluate its impact, a single-group pilot experiment was carried out with 14 undergraduate students using a pre-test/post-test validated by experts. The results show significant improvements in the students’ information skills, as well as positive evaluations of the exercise. We conclude that the incorporation of video games as a complement to the content of library training programs can be beneficial, especially as an introduction or for reinforcement or evaluation.