Identification of serious games for museum’s educational roles: A critical literature review

This paper presents a critical literature review aiming at mapping educational roles of museums against serious educational games used in support of those roles. The study is made in the specific context of informal learning in museums. The paper first proposes a conceptual visualization of the multidisciplinary area of use of serious games in support of the educational roles in museums. This conceptualization supported the search query construction for the study. This is a reusable and transferable conceptualization that can help others engaged in similar literature reviews. The paper then proposes two# clear and detailed typologies of educational roles and serious games types for informal learning. Both typologies contain explicit links to the sources that originated each of the types and subtypes. The classification of educational roles proposes 5 main categories. For each category there is a clear indication of the corresponding learning activities that may be used to put them into practice. The typology of serious educational games for informal learning in museums contains 3 main categories and 13 subcategories. For each of these sub-categories there is also a clear indication of the corresponding features of each game type. Finally, the paper proposes a conceptual map of the intersection of informal educational roles with serious educational games. This concept map, if used in conjunction with the two classifications proposed, can support serious game designers, museum educators and educational practitioners in their decision making, concerning choice of game types, customization and content design to support specific educational activities.