Integrative design and development of a digital game and game-based learning in financial education

Given recent societal and economic trends, financial literacy (i.e. the ability to reasonably deal with money and financial matters) has become a pivotal concern especially for adolescents and young adults. Whereas traditional financial education seems not to have the desired impact on financial behaviour formation and behavioural change, serious games could be considered more promising in this regard. However, to realise their full potential, serious games and game-based learning needs to consider (at least) three integrative aspects, namely: (1) The integration of the domain with the learners' cognitive and motivational processes by configuring elements of game design. (2) The integration of the educational context in which they are to function, including requirements of learners and other stakeholders. (3) The integration of game-based learning experience (procedural knowledge) with more formalised and abstract learning contents (conceptual knowledge). In this paper, we present three types of studies (i.e. a developmental study, case studies and an experimental study) each of which addresses one of these aspects. These studies yielded the following results: (1) the financial education serious game “FinanceMission Heroes”; (2) a number of guidelines for implementing this financial education serious game into educational contexts, and (3) effective conceptual scaffolds that help students to understand, apply and transfer the concept of budgeting, which is the core of the game. The findings of our project support the claim that a well-designed and integrated serious game can foster learning and motivation in financial education.