Creation of a serious videogame prototype “the Engineer” in the digital age to promote engineering English in Higher Education

Abstract

The technological advances that have taken place in recent decades have led to curricular changes at all levels. In particular, these changes have been affected by the demands of new generations - 'digital natives' (Prensky, 2001; 2017) and have meant that existing materials and resources in a physical mode have been adapted to a digital format (Girón-García & Silvestre-López, 2019; Girón-García & Boghiu-Balaur, 2021). This situation has posed a great challenge for many Higher Education (HE) teachers, who have not only had to train their students in this new literacy, but they themselves have had to receive this training and, due to the generation gap, have seen their possibilities weakened in terms of being able to offer quality online teaching. For this reason, as teachers, we consider that we have the responsibility to train our students in the digital medium since the simple fact of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) from childhood does not mean that they are perfectly digital natives. They need that specific training, especially when it comes to fulfilling tasks for a specific course objective. Furthermore, we also think that promoting ICTs in the classroom will engage students in their own learning process and even become more autonomous learners (Benson, 2013). Taking into account all this background, the methodology we will carry out in this study departs from the game-based approach to teach non-ludic content (Hunter & Werbach, 2012; Morris et al., 2013). This approach combines the principles of constructivism "learning by doing" (Piaget, 1978), and gamification by transforming traditional teaching content into a game (Margarida et al., 2010; Gallego-Durán et al., 2014). The aim of this investigation is to create a prototype of a serious videogame, "The Engineer'', whose main function is to teach technical language (level B2, CEFR) through content based on Education for Development and Global Citizenship (EpDyCG) to students of experimental groups of Industrial Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Universitat Jaume I (UJI), Universitat de València (UV), and Universidad de Granada (UGR). This video game will have 6 missions with a series of more specific objectives to complete each of these tasks. Therefore, this research aims to present the prototype of the serious video game "The Engineer'', along with its characteristics, lessons, the organization of its contents, and all this accompanied by a didactic guide. This guide can be displayed as a physical document or online document integrated into the prototype platform and could be used as supporting material for teachers and students of other higher education institutions. Yet, we believe that the future implementation of this video game prototype can serve as training for university students in order to help them learn specialized English in their field of study (i.e. engineering). Furthermore, its use allows students to reach a higher level of autonomy in their language learning process, as well as to improve their academic performance. Finally, it is worth mentioning the usefulness of this video game, since with its implementation we will be able to create future videogame designs that enhance language learning in other disciplines (e.g., Law, Nursing, Psychology, etc.).