The Webcam Eye Tracking as a tool to increase PX with Serious Games for Learning: A case study

Abstract

Serious Games (SG) for learning have been adopted by educational institutions as a virtual strategy for the contribution of hard and soft skills, however, the real-time monitoring of the use of this teaching resource are still not sufficiently studied. The existing research indicates, usually in an isolated way, contributions from the use of SG, obtained from experimental techniques or exclusively qualitative methods. As well, considering how much the new technologies based on the behavioral study make it possible to discover how the learner reacts at the exact moment of learning, this work monitored the Player Experience (PX) during the use of a simulator in a business environment by 7 students and 3 professors from the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do South not Brazil. Supported by a webcam eye tracking (ET) device, the fixation heat maps on the screen provided an understanding of the areas of greatest interest and fixation of the eye of each player at different times of the proposed game. Complementarily, with pre- and post-test questionnaire, it was possible to identify both very particular behaviors and collective patterns among the players, related to the influence of aspects such as design elements of the tutorial and the game, previous knowledge and the definition of the performance strategy. The results show that the use of the ET webcam can be very useful in evaluating the capabilities and design elements of the GS, both for those who use them in the teaching process and for game developers to, in the end, offer a better PX.