Speakers
Description
“Voice is not enough” for meaningful approaches to children’s participation in research. Other factors such as the creation of a safe space for children to express themselves, and actions that ensure that children and young people’s views are taken seriously into consideration are necessary preconditions.
This work presents the evaluation of the prototype version of the Happy Onlife, quiz-based game for children, designed to raise awareness of the opportunities and risks of the online world. Developed in line with the EU's Better Internet for Kids strategy, the digital game is part of an edutainment toolkit promoting safe and responsible use of Internet among children and adults as well as raising awareness on online safety, risks for privacy, cybersecurity and cyberbullying.
We conducted a Gamified Participatory Evaluation with N= 114 children aged 8-12 years to maximize children’s engagement and fun. While for previous development and assessment, we arranged school workshops, on this occasion, we wanted to embed the assessment within the game itself.
The results of the study indicate that children rated the majority of the questions as fun but they suggested improvements regarding the relevance of the questions to their everyday activities and the use of terminology that is more common among young people. This study contributes with the refinement of the final version of the game before its final launch and provides a novel approach for evaluating serious games by incorporating digital play into the evaluation process. The study shows how policy and research results are implemented in schools.
Keywords
participatory research, gamified experience, children’s online safety, harmful online behaviour, (cyber)bullying prevention
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
|---|---|
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Mixed method study |
