Learning to Read by Learning to Write: Evaluation of a Serious Game to Foster Business Process Model Comprehension

Winter, Michael and Pryss, Rüdiger and Probst, Thomas and Reichert, Manfred (2020) Learning to Read by Learning to Write: Evaluation of a Serious Game to Foster Business Process Model Comprehension. JMIR Serious Games, 8 (1).

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Abstract

Background: The management and comprehension of business process models are of utmost importance for almost any enterprise. To foster the comprehension of such models, this paper has incorporated the idea of a serious game called Tales of Knightly Process.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether the serious game has a positive, immediate, and follow-up impact on process model comprehension.

Methods: A total of two studies with 81 and 64 participants each were conducted. Within the two studies, participants were assigned to a game group and a control group (ie, study 1), and a follow-up game group and a follow-up control group (ie, study 2). A total of four weeks separated study 1 and study 2. In both studies, participants had to answer ten comprehension questions on five different process models. Note that, in study 1, participants in the game group played the serious game before they answered the comprehension questions to evaluate the impact of the game on process model comprehension.

Results: In study 1, inferential statistics (analysis of variance) revealed that participants in the game group showed a better immediate performance compared to control group participants (P<.001). A Hedges g of 0.77 also indicated a medium to large effect size. In study 2, follow-up game group participants showed a better performance compared to participants from the follow-up control group (P=.01); here, a Hedges g of 0.82 implied a large effect size. Finally, in both studies, analyses indicated that complex process models are more difficult to comprehend (study 1: P<.001; study 2: P<.001).

Conclusions: Participants who played the serious game showed better performance in the comprehension of process models when comparing both studies.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: DBIS Research > Publications
Divisions: Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science > Institute of Databases and Informations Systems > DBIS Research and Teaching > DBIS Research > Publications
Depositing User: Herr Michael Winter
Date Deposited: 18 Jun 2020 10:56
Last Modified: 26 Aug 2020 12:12
URI: http://dbis.eprints.uni-ulm.de/id/eprint/1904

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