Using MEEGA/MEEGA+ for the Evaluation of Educational Games: A Retrospective

Educational games are assumed to be an effective and efficient instructional strategy. However, it is essential to systematically evaluate such games in order to obtain sound evidence of their impact. An alternative is the MEEGA/MEEGA+ model, providing support to evaluate games in terms of motivation, user experience, and learning based on the reaction of the students. Since its first publication in 2011 originally focusing on games for teaching Software Engineering it has been adopted for a wide range of games and knowledge domains. Thus, the objective of this article is to present a systematic mapping on the application of the MEEGA/MEEGA+ model identifying 166 relevant articles, and describing 170 studies on the evaluation of 178 serious games. Findings show that the model is mostly used as-is in case studies as an easy way to evaluate games in the classroom, with fewer studies simplifying the data collection instrument and/or completing the data collection with other measurement instruments. This shows that especially the improved version MEEGA+ is a well-accepted model for the evaluation of serious games in order to assist game creators and instructors to improve such games as well as to support decisions on their application within instructional units.