Field assessment of Serious Games for Entrepreneurship in Higher Education

The potential of Serious Games (SGs) in education is widely recognized, and their adoption is significant in particular in children instruction. However, the deployment rate of SGs in higher education (HE) and their proper insertion in meaningful curricula is still quite low. This paper intends to make a first step in the direction of a better characterization of the pedagogical effectiveness of SGs in HE, by providing a qualitative analysis based on our field experience using three games for entrepreneurship, that we have studied in the light of two well established pedagogical paradigms, such as the Revised Bloom’s taxonomy and the Kolb’s Learning stages. In general, we observe that SGs address several goals of the Bloom’s taxonomy, in particular at the lower levels. Moreover, the cyclical nature of the business simulations can be directly mapped to the sequential steps described by Kolb. However, our analysis also shows that SGs have still to significantly evolve in order to become an effective and efficient tool that could be successfully and reliably used in HE. In the light of our experience, we also propose a schema for a proper integration of SGs by supporting different goals in different steps of a formal education process, Our study finally suggests directions for future research in the field.