Serious Games as an Instrument of Non-Formal Learning

Abstract

This chapter contains a systematic overview of various didactic designs, which are used to provide learning experiences via the Internet. Using the example of renewable energy, the development and status quo of Web-didactic offers is reconstructed on the basis of concrete cases ranging from simple replication of classical teaching materials to different kinds of serious games. This bottom-up approach provides a practical introduction on how to evaluate serious games or other digital learning offers by identifying the most essential criteria for a didactic game analysis, but can also be used for benchmarking as some of the examples might also be inspiring for actual game design. Furthermore, this review indicates a significant gap between the high didactic standards for designing self-administrated learning environments and the factual realization as it is shown in most of the examined cases. A basic understanding of the requirements of different learning settings is given in the introduction.