Codebreakers: Designing and developing a serious game for the teaching of information theory

Abstract

This paper reports the conceptualization, design, and development of the first and second prototype of a serious game for the teaching of the basics of Information Theory. Using the steps for a needs and context analysis, the researchers, lecturer and game developers participated in a focused group discussion to conceptualize the context and content for the game. Based on the design concepts found through the literature review, the team chose to follow a design research approach to create the academic intervention. The team used known game attributes and design principles, as well as feedback from guided evaluations, to create the first two prototypes of the game Codebreakers which is currently being used at the University of Johannesburg. As described in the design research approach, the team used an iterative process to develop the prototypes, with the final goal being to reach a point where the academic intervention can be generalized to other contexts.