Towards Modding and Reengineering Digital Games for Education

Research has highlighted the positive qualities of Digital Games for Education (DGE), such as their persuasiveness and motivational appeal, which can support immersive, situated and learner-centered learning experiences. Designing, Developing and Developing (DDD) games for education remain a challenge, especially in terms of costs and of the advanced, multi-disciplinary expertise required to DDD a game. This paper highlights the challenges associated with the implementation of pedagogical requisites and analyzes opportunities for enabling modular, scalable and more elastic DDD processes. To support the approach, the authors present the Reusability Serious Games Reusability Point of Reference (SGREF), a tool that aims to facilitate game modding and reengineering by capturing and structuring information on DDD processes. Two case studies are presented to reflect the particularities teachers are confronted with when attempting to alter or extend a DEG and how SGREF is used to collect information to support DEG modding and reengineering.