Gamification in education: Serious Game Prototype for Children with Special Needs

Gamification or integrating game elements within
the non-game environment is widely used to improve systems,
services, and the overall user experience. It is mainly intended for
education purposes, not for mere entertainment. Gamification can
provide many benefits like creating a stimulating environment for
learning and engagement with content in an unconventional way.
These benefits are vital for the education of children with special
needs because they suffer from constant distraction and loss of
motivation. Therefore, we introduce a serious game prototype for
children with special needs. The main purpose of this serious game
is to assess total reading and understanding the impact of
augmented reality as a learning methodology. This game is a
complementary approach to motivate students after using an AR
learning environment. This assessment game was designed
according to the systemic gamification principles and contains the
elements of game formula like points, time, and player profile. It
will be used to assess children after learning sessions using AR and
flashcards. The card assessment game is an unconventional way to
evaluate children. Each child is different from her/his peers in the
academic level, so the number of words is chosen at the beginning
of the game based on what the child has learned in the training
sessions. The child profile result confirmed that the game can be
used in assessment. Moreover, parents and specialists confirmed
that children enjoyed the assessment session, and the game is not
limited to test only, as some children play it for language
development.