Serious Games to Teach Ethics

In this paper, we are focusing on digital serious games (edugames) and how they can be utilized in teaching in the ethics and citizenship domain. Our aim is to combine narrative techniques with intelligent tutoring techniques in a single model that adopts and based on educational theories and classroom educational strategies. The model has been used to implement an adaptive educational interactive narrative system (AEINS). AEINS is an inquiry based edugame to support teaching ethics. The AEINS version presented in this paper targets students between the age of 8 and 11. The idea is centered around presenting and involving students in different moral dilemmas (called teaching moments) within which the Socratic Method is the used pedagogy in the teaching process. AEINS monitors and analyzes the students actions in order to provide an individualized story-path and an individualized learning process. The student is an active participant in the educational process and is able to interact with the edugame as a first person player. We claim that such interaction can help in developing new or deeper thoughts about different moral situations. Our aim is to contribute to the design of serious games and help raise awareness of ethics and citizenship in children.