Designing the Learning Process: The IOLAOS Platform

Abstract

The robust growth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its massive usage in every aspect of human life has made a tremendous impact on the learning process, leading to new concerns over the need to reform the educational system to embody such technologies. Therefore, a resurgence of interest has occurred in how to use serious games as assistance to pedagogical activities over the last years. Serious games though must be designed for individuals to provide a personalized experience and increase perceived value for learners. However, creating such games is not an easy task, requiring an expertise from a wide variety of fields such as game and software developers, educational specialists, game testers and teachers. Driven from the above reasons we have designed and developed the IOLAOS platform, which aims to facilitate the collaboration of user roles in order to (a) enable educational experts to codify the learning process, styles and preferences into game creation, (b) share information and instructions with game developers to make their games adaptable (c) allow teachers to shape the learning process and create their own virtual classes, monitor learning sessions and customize their learner's game experience based on their profile, (d) offer learners a unique educational game experience and (e) permit game testers to constantly evaluate the whole process and provide feedback for the reliability of the platform and the learning process itself.