Serious games are more and more part of the issues linked to the teaching methods’ renewal. The success that STEM challenge met on the other side of the Atlantic is quite conclusive, and so is the passion that has been shown, more recently in France, for a certain doctoral dissertation about the serious games’ conception in an educational environment.

As you may remember, a short while ago we posted an article about the success that STEM Challenge met in the USA. This competition, sponsored by the American government and some big companies such as AMD and Microsoft, wanted to renew the hard sciences’ teaching approach through the creation of video games: each and every participant had to learn the concerned subjects (mathematics, physics, etc.) in order to create its video game and to present it to the jury.

This new approach of the serious games has inspired and fuelled up the other academic interests. This time, it’s a PhD candidate that decided to question the methods and tools used to create video games and analyse how they can be use to facilitate the creation of serious games. His thesis shows that the main strength of a serious game is that in order to create a game on a theme suggested by a lecturer, the student/game’s creator must first grasp the minimum knowledge and complete his education on the concerned theme. The serious games creation would then be a relevant base for the set up of activities such as “active pedagogy”.

If you feel like reading the dissertation (PDF in French, 11 Mo) follow the link below: www.ludoscience.com/files/these_djaouti.pdf