Pedagogical and iterative design of a serious game for statistical literacy: Enhancing player experience for college students by developing version 2.0

Abstract

Learning statistical concepts, such as measures of central tendency, are foundational for understanding data analysis and interpretation. However, students often struggle with their comprehension and application. In order to try to facilitate and improve its learning for college students, making it more visual, interactive and fun, we have created the digital serious game “Biased distributions”.

In this paper we present the iterative redesign and implementation of the second version of this serious game, developed in response to feedback from 56 pre-service teachers (undergraduate and master’s students) who tested the first version. Building on constructivist principles, version 2 introduces three key player experience improvements: better interaction with elements, user-selectable levels and a more step-by-step guidance. Although this new game version has not yet been tested, we hope that the commented improvements implemented in this new version will enhance the gameplay experience and may help other serious game designers and developers to create better experiences from the start, allowing students to focus more on the learning of content than on issues related to the game’s interface.