Using e-learning standards in educational video games

In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o The integration of educational video games in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) is a challenging task in need of standardization to improve interoperability and to safeguard investment. The generalized use of VLEs has fostered the emergence of rich contents, and different standards exist to improve their interoperabil-ity and reusability. This work describes a proposal of how existing e-learning standards can be used to improve the integration of educational games in VLEs, while introducing a set of models that take into account the features of the selected standards. A specific implementation of this approach in the eAdventure game platform is also presented. Online learning is widespread in today's educational environments , supported by Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as Moodle™, Sakai™, or Blackboard™. New VLEs are not only delivery front-ends for on-line repositories of contents, but key elements in the new educational experiences dealing with all the aspects of users, courses and communication management. In addition, there is a generalization of VLEs use in all levels of education, from K-12 to universities or even in-company training programs. However, high quality content is still a key element for an effective VLE-mediated teaching/learning process and this content development is a challenging and costly process that usually involves interdisciplinary teams [1]. In this line, there is a growing interest in the active integration of highly interactive contents (simulations, games, etc.) in VLEs, aiming to attract and retain students and to improve the educational process. In addition, the interactive nature of these contents can be used to improve learning, as they support bidirectional communication (i.e. content–VLE and VLE–content) that can be used to adapt content to specific students' needs and to provide more detailed and accurate assessment, compared to more static contents (e.g. PDFs). However, there are open issues related to the interoperability of these new services due to the number of coexisting e-learning standards and the lack of a general consensus on how to use them to model the new features that interactive contents provide. Furthermore, e-learning standards compliance in mainstream VLEs is limited. Therefore, to …