Cross-Disciplinary Approaches for Developing Serious Games in Higher Education

While some educators have adopted commercial off-the-shelf games for use in the classroom, such games may not always meet the individual requirements of lecturers whose courses are tied to specific learning outcomes. An alternative is to capitalise on in-house expertise in higher education and create serious games through cross-disciplinary team projects. This paper outlines such a project within one higher education institution. It describes synergies created across disciplines as a result of the collaboration on game design and implementation. It looks at tensions generated between the pedagogical requirements (of lecturers), entertainment objectives (of games designers) and technical excellence (sought by developers). Additionally, this paper looks at two serious games designed within this framework. Through reflections on the process and the product, this paper examines whether the collaborative process adopted within a higher education context can generate a product good enough to sit beside professionally designed games.