Multimodal Learning Analytics for Serious Game Validation in Authentic Educational Settings

Multimodal Learning Analytics for Serious Game Validation in Authentic Educational Settings

📅 Friday 22/05 11:00-12:30h

📍 Workshop Space A

🔎 Needs Analysis

Validating serious games (and other similar digital activities) as effective educational tools remains challenging due to the complexity of measuring learning outcomes in real-world settings (e.g., school classrooms). Evaluations often require heterogeneous multimodal data, including in-game interaction data and pre- and post-survey responses, which are typically collected in different formats and systems.
This workshop presents an approach based on IEEE xAPI standard for serious game validation based on multimodal learning analytics, integrating survey-based measures with gameplay data to support evidence-based assessment. And it will also address ethical issues, data ownership, and compliance with privacy regulations, including the EU GDPR.
The workshop aims to facilitate rigorous, scalable, and privacy-aware evaluation practices for serious games in education.

📒 Session Description

The workshop will combine short presentations, live demonstrations, and guided hands-on activities. It will start with an introduction to the challenges of serious game validation and the foundations of the multimodal approach. Participants will then try one or more educational games and explore examples of the data they generate. A demonstration of the framework will show how to configure a study, integrate surveys and gameplay data, and inspect results.

In small groups, participants will design a basic multimodal evaluation plan for a proposed or self-chosen case. Group discussions will address result interpretation, limitations, and ethical and legal considerations. Each group will produce a draft multimodal evaluation design.

💡 Learning Objectives

The participants will learn about:

• What is an evidence-based approach in digital learning.
• The principles of serious game validation from a multimodal learning analytics perspective.
• Design basic experimental or quasi-experimental studies for serious game evaluation in the classroom.
• How to use IEEE xAPI standard to get user data.
• Learn about SIMVA software to manage users and data during educational experiments.