Experiments with teachers in training to test a game to raise awareness against cyberbullying

As part of the validation and improvement process of the Analytics System, a series of experiments have been conducted with teachers and teachers in training testing a serious game. The experiments aimed to validate both the game and the xAPI based Analytics System with future teachers and show them how games can be used as an educational tool in the class, in particular to raise awareness of a certain issue. Participants of the experiments played the game and completed pre-post questionnaires to share their opinions of the whole experiment and to check if the game has changed the perception on the topic

The experiments have been conducted with 72 teachers and education students of ESCUNI (http://www.escuni.es/), a University Teacher Training Center (affiliated to the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain) during December 2017 and January 2018, and with 34 pedagogical Students of the Complutense University of Madrid in December 2017.

Figure 1. Students from the University Teacher Training Center ESCUNI testing the serious game Conectado.

The game used on the experiments is Conectado, a videogame developed within the e-learning and serious games research group e-UCM in cooperation with the Complutense-Telefonica Chair in digital education and serious games. The videogame has been designed and developed with the goal of raising awareness against bullying and cyberbullying. Conectado aims to be a tool to help education professionals to educate on this subject in a more interactive way and with greater emotional involvement of young people from 12 to 17 years. The videogame is a graphic adventure where the player is placed in the situation of a person who suffers harassment in their day to day school. In this way, the player can experience these situations in first person, but in a safe way. It also allows you to experience firsthand some of the feelings of the victims of harassment, as well as to make players reflect on the consequences of their actions. In the game, students can make decisions in dialogues that affect the story of the game and its end.

The game aims to motivate a further discussion directed by teachers of aspects such as: bullying in schools and cyberbullying (both incidence of the problem and how to tackle it), advantages of videogames to raise awareness, what they learn associated with a memory, the importance of dealing with observers in bullying, avoiding passive observers and making observers act in favor of the victim.

Figure 2. Pedagogical students testing the serious game Conectado to raise awareness against cyberbullying.

The e-UCM group is also testing the understandability by the teachers of the analytics system and if this information and visualizations help teachers to do a better use of games as class learning tools.