The use of serious games has shown immense importance in several fields such as education and in particular the learning of computer programming. Several experiences have shown the positive impact of integrating serious games into programming learning. Some programming concepts present many difficulties for learners, especially for beginners, such as variables and operator priority rules. In this paper, we present the design, development and evaluation of a serious game called "AppProg Game" dedicated to learning these two programming concepts: variables and the priority of arithmetic and logical operators. The evaluation took place with a final class scientific section in a secondary school in Tunisia at the level of learning. The result of this experience showed that the integration of serious games helped learners to assimilate the two concepts discussed. The experiment showed that learners did not progress in the same way. For this reason, in our future experiment, we plan to adapt the game to the learners' profile using artificial intelligence techniques.

Programming learning has become a 21st century skill, several countries have integrated it into their school curricula. Numerous studies have addressed the teaching of computational thinking and programming in primary schools and even nursery schools. These studies have shown that learning programming presents many difficulties for learners, especially beginners. This paper proposes a new classification of the difficulties encountered in learning programming for beginners, in particular for secondary school students. We also aim to study the impact of gender and level of learners in less developed regions on programming learning. We carried out two questionnaires with 79 students in a final year science class at a secondary school in Tunisia. The study showed that the majority of learners encountered difficulties of several types and with several concepts. The most difficult concepts were variables, operator priority rules and loops. The study also showed that gender had no effect on programming.

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for designing Serious Games (SG) that integrate eXtended Reality (XR)-including virtual, mixed, and augmented reality systems, to create immersive and interactive learning experiences. Key features include a model to define game mechanics and learning content, a specification approach to ensure effective XR integration, alignment with educational goals, and iterative evaluation by designers, educators, and students to ensure continuous improvement. Our design approach empowers educators to define the purpose, mechanics, and XR features of the game while keeping them closely aligned with the pedagogical objectives. The proposed framework provides a step-by-step guide for participants in SG with XR (XR-SG) design, covering all stages from preparation to testing. This work contributes to the workshop’s mission by advancing the use of XR applications in education and fostering multidisciplinary collaboration for the creation of impactful, immersive learning solutions.

As digital technologies continue to evolve rapidly, Serious games (SG) have emerged as powerful tools for education, training, decision-making, and other diverse domains that leverage game-based mechanics to enhance engagement and learning outcomes. However, their effectiveness is often limited by the lack of structured knowledge representation and adaptability to various learning contexts. Ontologies offer a solution by providing a formalized, machine-readable structure that enhances content organization, reasoning, and personalization within SGs. This paper presents a cross-domain ontology for SGs that aims to provide a unified framework for representing the key concepts, relationships, and dynamics within SGs across various domains. It also aims to bridge gaps between different fields by formalizing the diverse aspects of SGs, such as learning outcomes, player engagement, interactivity, and feedback mechanisms. By integrating concepts from multiple domains, the proposed ontology enables better understanding, analysis, and development of SGs, facilitating their application in diverse contexts. Furthermore, the ontology serves as a foundation for semantic interoperability between SGs and related systems, promoting the creation of more adaptive and personalized gaming experiences tailored to specific learning or developmental objectives.

Abstract Serious games (SGs) are valuable tools for learning, training, and improving skills in various domains because they engage and motivate players to achieve planned processes to reach objectives. Several works provided methods, models, and frameworks to support SG development. However, designers, developers, teachers, and researchers face challenges in creating SG with entertainment and learning balance, and many designed games still do not fulfill the main intended objectives. This paper introduces an approach, called SGDA‐IE with phases and steps to follow during the entire SG design process. It was built on literature review and SG design challenges designers need to consider from the early stages when creating SG. The proposed approach is founded on three perspectives: software engineering best practices, video game industry practices, and SG success factors and provides means to overcome the investigated design challenges. These are characteristics taxonomy model, requirements specification approach, and artifacts iterative evaluation by designer, domain expert, and players. To assess our approach efficacy, we conceived a health, safety, and environment (HSE) training SG for workers on fuel storage sites and petroleum installations. The feedback received is positive and indicates a favorable specification method of the SG, effective participatory design, and control over requirements evolution. The SG playtesting reveals a significant involvement of participants and efficient tracking of the knowledge acquisition.

This paper presents a case study based on Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory designed to gather learner opinions regarding the use of competency-based applications in technology-enhanced learning. In particular, a questionnaire was designed to measure the satisfaction of learners with a Competency Management, Development and Tracking Tool, called CMD2T, which can be integrated into virtual learning environments in order to provide users with a practical way to assess, track, and prove competencies associated with a given course. To test the reliability and validity of the proposed questionnaire, two statistical methods have been used. The Cronbach's alpha test was performed to check the internal consistency of each subscale comprising the questionnaire as well as the entire questionnaire. Besides, different validity procedures have been used to assess its validity, including construct validity using factor analysis, convergent and discriminant validity. Results of factor analysis and learner satisfaction measurement indicated that the questionnaire is proved to be a reliable instrument to measure learners' satisfaction and that the proposed CMD2T tool is very useful and highly appreciated by teachers and students. This paper, also, aims to show how a new questionnaire to assess learners' satisfaction can be validated. Hence, researchers who have a similar issue related to measuring learners' satisfaction about an innovative competence-based tool can potentially benefit from the paper's results.

Abstract In the domain of technology-enhanced competency-based learning and training, there is an increased interest in the integration of competency-related information for supporting competency-driven decision-making purposes. Indeed, since competency development draws upon several related areas, including teaching subjects, instructional design, learning resource annotation, e-Portfolios and motivated by the need for an integrated and semantic-based approach to competency management and development, a series of ontological structures have been formalized and developed for each of these areas. This paper aims to provide a framework specification for lifelong competency management and development, called LCMDF. The main advantage of this framework lies in its ability to provide a unifying semantic foundation in the form of a set of controlled vocabularies for describing competencies and their related details within the contexts of technology-enhanced competency-based learning and training. Moreover, this framework provides a novel integrated model to support a wide range of use cases. The proposed framework results from reusing widespread international standards for competency modeling which helps designing and implementing interoperability architecture of semantically-enhanced competency-based learning/human resource (HR) systems.

In technology-enhanced learning, semantic annotations have been employed to attach semantic metadata to learning materials in order to significantly enhance their accessibility by human users and machines as well. In this paper, we present an ontology-based multi-level semantic representation model that aims to enrich the description of learning objects with semantics regarding their subjects, competencies and instructional roles. More specifically, the proposed model uses three ontologies: a subject domain ontology describing the domain concepts and the relations that are covered by the subject matter being taught, a competency ontology describing the competency-related characteristics of learners and learning resources, and an instructional role ontology specifying the instructional role(s) a learning object can play in an instructional setting. To demonstrate the feasibility of our model, an illustrative example is given that explains how learning object semantics can be represented with different granularities.

Over the last century, different learning theories have shaped the world of education and training before shifting to the competency-based approach (CBA). This new paradigm to teaching and learning aims to ensure that every student has to graduate with the competitive competencies of lifelong learners and is ready to enter the workforce and begin functioning in entry-level positions. However, despite the growing interest in competency-based learning and training, this field still faces numerous challenges, essentially the lack of consensus about an interoperable description of competency evidences. Indeed, the move towards CBA has created a need for effective instruments that support and assess competency development. In this context, the electronic portfolio (e-Portfolio) emerged as a suitable tool that helps learners collect and manage multiple kinds of assessment evidences linked to the program’s competencies from multiple sources. In this paper, we propose an ontology-based approach to e-portfolio modeling which relies on Semantic Web technologies to formally and semantically describe portfolio artifacts that evidence the achievement of one or several competencies. The proposed ontology is structured according to official e-Portfolio specifications, namely IMS ePortfolio and JISC Leap2A. In addition, other existing approaches to e-Portfolio modeling reported in the literature have been explored to avoid misinterpretation of these specifications. Furthermore, a comparative study of common e-Portfolio systems has been carried out in order to gain a fairly accurate idea of the generic structure of an e-Portfolio.

The Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle is currently the most popular software solution which provides many modules for various teaching and learning purposes. However, several aspects relevant for competency management are typically missing in Moodle. This paper proposes an ontology-based competency management application which is developed as a Moodle extension for supporting the development and assessment of competencies inside a course. Details about the competency ontology adopted for designing the competency-based course structure as well as the competency management features embedded into Moodle are presented. By incorporating these features into a LMS, it becomes possible to manage target competencies together with their associated evidence items and assess proficiency levels reached by students for each target competency. In addition, it becomes possible to generate different types of competency reports depending on the target role (teachers, students or administrators).

Within this paper we focus on the representation of open educational resources based on the agent-based modeling. The open educational resources (OER) concept is introduced as well as the agent-based modeling approach (ABM). We then propose to represent an OER by an agent and to take into account some properties such as its dynamic aspect and its behaviors. An agent structure in then introduced based on the modeling of learning objects.

For some years, competency-based learning and training has known a growing interest, especially in conjunction with proliferation of the terms "knowledge society", "citizen mobility", or "globalization". Competency modeling becomes an important concept in many domains, especially in human resource development and e-Learning. In this paper, we present a review of relevant competency metadata standards and some ontology-based approaches for competency modeling.

This paper presents the difficulties, which the students and the teachers are faced with in the distance learning process. We will begin by presenting the technical and the administrative difficulty concerning the student. In the second part we present the technical and conceptual constraints that a teacher has to take into account in the distance learning process.