Abstract
Serious games are increasingly being used for training of communicative skills. The main idea is to create a virtual environment in which a trainee can interact with graphically embodied virtual characters. By designing scenarios in such way that the character’s behaviour provides direct feedback on the correctness of the trainee’s choices, an interactive learning experience is created. This paper explores the potential of this approach in the domain of law enforcement. A prototype has been developed of a serious game that enables police academy students to train their communicative skills. A pilot study with 41 students has been conducted. The results show that this is a promising instrument for education in this domain, but also point out several suggestions for improvement.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by funding from the National Initiative Brain and Cognition, coordinated by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), under grant agreement No. 056-25-013. The authors wish to thank Annet Beunk, Bianca Korporaal, Jeroen de Man, Frank Mosterd, Hans van Velzen, and all participants in the study for their contribution to the project.
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Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C. (2017). Towards Serious Gaming for Communication Training - A Pilot Study with Police Academy Students. In: Poppe, R., Meyer, JJ., Veltkamp, R., Dastani, M. (eds) Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. INTETAIN 2016 2016. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 178. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49616-0_2
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