Towards model-driven requirements engineering for serious educational games: Informal, semi-formal, and formal models

Abstract

Serious educational games (SEGs) are receiving significant attention, as they provide immersive, engaging learning environments with a rigourous pedagogical foundation. SEG engineering requires an interdisciplinary approach involving game developers, educators, and software engineers. The requirements engineering (RE) community has substantial expertise in processes, notations, tools, and techniques. Here, we explore how can we tailor and adopt this expertise for developing SEGs with a three step model-based approach that integrates established techniques: create an informal model of the SEG requirements (narrative captured like a storyboard); transform the narrative into a semi-formal, tailored UML use case model (visual and tabular, using templates); transform the semi-formal model into formal models for testing and verification. A collection of SEGs (test games) has been created using the process; currently the transformations are performed manually. The formal model is represented in XML, which can be loaded, played, and tested in the game engine. In the future, we will explore semi-automatically transforming the models and creating Statechart models, which can be verified using simulations. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.