Learning to Read by Learning to Write: Evaluation of a Serious Game to Foster Business Process Model Comprehension

BACKGROUND: The management and comprehension of business process models are of utmost importance for almost any enterprise. To foster the comprehension of such models, this paper has incorporated the idea of a serious game called Tales of Knightly Process. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate whether the serious game has a positive, immediate, and follow-up impact on process model comprehension. METHODS: A total of two studies with 81 and 64 participants each were conducted. Within the two studies, participants were assigned to a game group and a control group (ie, study 1), and a follow-up game group and a follow-up control group (ie, study 2). A total of four weeks separated study 1 and study 2. In both studies, participants had to answer ten comprehension questions on five different process models. Note that, in study 1, participants in the game group played the serious game before they answered the comprehension questions to evaluate the impact of the game on process model comprehension. RESULTS: In study 1, inferential statistics (analysis of variance) revealed that participants in the game group showed a better immediate performance compared to control group participants (P<.001). A Hedges g of 0.77 also indicated a medium to large effect size. In study 2, follow-up game group participants showed a better performance compared to participants from the follow-up control group (P=.01); here, a Hedges g of 0.82 implied a large effect size. Finally, in both studies, analyses indicated that complex process models are more difficult to comprehend (study 1: P<.001; study 2: P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Participants who played the serious game showed better performance in the comprehension of process models when comparing both studies.