Studying Thracian Civilization Through Serious Games and Storytelling

Introduction

The knowledge society and knowledge-based economy signifies a new era for education and training, aiming at replacing old-fashioned time / place / content-predetermined learning with a just-in-time / at work-place / customized / on-demand process of learning by new ICT-based tools (Bontchev et al., 2016; Pavlov et al., 2007). Ubiquitous learning is aimed to provide learners with content and interaction anytime and anywhere (Hwang et al., 2008; Nussli & Oh, 2021). Current technology-enhanced learning points to the investigation and the deployment of practical learning methods and scenarios for creative thinking, learning-by-doing and learning-by-authoring, engaging learners in more active participation during the perception of knowledge (Draganov et al., 2015). The main challenges during the training material development imply the following questions:

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  How to increase motivation, engagement, and improved learning outcomes?

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  What learning methods can be used to attract learners in more active participation in the learning process?

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  What tasks could be interesting and attractive and could stimulate learners’ desire to work?

Serious games become an important modern-day educational method, which reflects both the current state of technology and the learners’ social profiles. Serious educational games provide a novel way to transfer knowledge, which can especially attract young people by using interactive multimedia technology. They could provide tools for better understanding, creative thinking and engaging young people in more active participation during the perceiving of knowledge. The technological revolution gives innovative learning tools to the teachers and the possibility to deploy new learning approaches for deeper understanding and better demonstration of the learning content. Serious games represent a power tool to seek creative and logical thought, problem-solving, as well as develop a variety of skills and competencies to the learner.

Digital storytelling learning method successfully helps instructors to motivate students learning, stimulate curiosity, and to make them interested. Combination of storytelling and serious game represents a novel learning approach. The new strategies for teaching and learning point to the investigation and the deployment of workable learning methods and scenarios for better understanding of the learning content and engagement learners in more active participation during the perception of knowledge (Slavova-Petkova et al., 2016).

The serious game development requires a flexible tool for developing, managing, and presenting games. We developed a game editor and a game portal for creating various games (Connolly et al., 2012). The server-based solution can facilitate the game development by applying game templates, layout styles and question pools. It also supports the development of game packages for multiple languages and multiple platforms (Web and mobile). The games can easily be customized for various learning domains. Complex games can be composed from several so-called mini-games and the tool also supports the evaluation of the user answers and organizing competitions (Georgieva-Tsaneva et al., 2018).

The main objective of the chapter is to present how serious games can be applied in teaching humanities in primary school. This chapter presents a novel learning approach for studying the ancient Bulgarian history, civilization and their cultural heritage and the Thracian civilization in particular by storytelling and serious game combination.

The rest of the book chapter is organized as follows. The background section provides an overview of serious educational games and digital storytelling. Then factors related to the learner experience and content understanding issues are presented. The subsequent sections introduce the applied game development tools and the games transferring knowledge on ancient civilizations lived on the area of present Bulgaria. Future research directions are also shown. Finally, the chapter is summarized in the last section.