Investigating the Deployment of Serious Games in Secondary Education: A Pilot Study Inspired by Design-Based Research

This paper describes a pilot deployment in lower secondary school of a serious game dedicated to the learning of history. The primary aim of the initiative was to investigate the integration of Serious Games-based learning environments in the school study of humanities subjects. The pilot was carried out as part of investigations that researchers in the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA) Network of Excellence are conducting into the adoption and deployment of Serious Games (SG) in formal learning contexts. In this regard, the paper outlines the sequence of deployed pilot activities, which was shaped with the intention of responding to the needs of all the participants involved - researchers, educators and learners. This approach is inspired by the principles of design-based research, as illustrated in the strategies adopted both for piloting activities and data gathering. The paper reports the outcome of these and considers some implications of the adopted approach both for SG deployment in formal education and for implementation of experimental SG pilots of this kind.