Contributions to Conferences

The Construction of Serious Games Supporting Creativity in Student Labs

Abstract

The human capital for the European Factories of the Future is the key enabler to competing in high value manufacturing. Therefore, the education and training schemes for young talents, supported by new and rapidly developing ICT technologies, have to be flexible and adaptable to the future manufacturing needs. New approaches for managing knowledge and developing skills will be required so that the manufacturing decision making can be dispersed in the production level. In order for the best of European human capital to be a center of attention, the weak societal appeal of manufacturing has to be overcome as evidenced in the decline of student interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. The aim of the paper is to focus on a sample of current offer of serious games in manufacturing education. Although manufacturing education have been using simulations in facilitating a better understanding of the theoretical concepts, the transition to using serious games is prone to mistakes. This paper presents the comparative analysis of three existing serious games in manufacturing education, assessing the game design and pedagogical underpinnings of the serious games. The result of the analysis has yielded a set of guidelines that supports the development of serious games in manufacturing education.