LOCATION-BASED TOURISM IN-GAME CERTIFICATION

Serious games are starting to attain a higher role as learning tools in several and diversified contexts such as education and training. Serious games provide a favorable learning environment where mistakes can occur without real life penalty and students get instant feedback from challenges. The rules, behavior simulation, and feedback from the player's actions of the studied games, provide a realistic context for learning where failure and repetition can be a positive contribution to achieve success. These challenges are designed in accordance with the intended learning objectives and will self-adapt and repeat according to the student difficulty level while providing instant feedback. There is decisively an acquisition of knowledge and experience through: (1) motivating and engaging environments, (2) approaches to problem solving and simulation of different situations, and also, (3) from contexts where players can develop professional skills. However, how do we certify acquired knowledge and competencies? Until now, most research has been focused on the evaluation of the game itself rather than on the learners' assessment. The analysis of the player is usually performed at the end of the game using traditional questionnaire forms. Instead of that, using our Correlation Matrix methodology [15], we provide a set of guidelines for game designers to build specific games for the certification of competences, and an in-game assessment in location-based cultural heritage applications. This assessment can be done with in-game mechanics and challenges providing a learning path to obtain the intended competences. These guidelines are established on a triad of components: Competencies/Mechanics/Play, following the approach of Casper Harteveld (Play/Meaning/Reality) [19]. This is needed for balancing the relationship between the game mechanics for serious games genres, the array of competences to certify, and the game elements. This paper presents a matrix of generic skills, based on the Education Competences [12] which serves as a reference to identify which competencies must be used to obtain the performance success of each situation. Based on the combination of identified competencies and the training game genres, this choice allows the identification of the most appropriate and necessary mechanics and challenges by comparison with a correlation matrix between competencies and game genre analysis with 120 serious games. Currently this methodology is being applied in the context of tourism guide's applications with the key objective of identifying ability patterns correlated in acquiring different skills (multiplex). In the tourism guide's context these skills could be planning and organizing the city exploration through challenges and targets to achieve, and successful assess heritage knowledge by quizzes or photos taken. As a result, existing game mechanics are identified and new ones are created and implemented in a Location-Based Gaming (LBG) platform to support more learning and to better interact with the heritage sites. As a case study the guidelines will be applied to a tourism mobile route application, about Porto heritage, to provide an improved design so that it may also be capable of in-game certification of tourism guides.