PhD Courses in Denmark

The objective of this PhD course is to provide PhD Candidates with new theories and methods within evaluations of serious games and design-oriented artefacts and technologies. Several studies evaluate games, a technology, product, or service during development, often iteratively, to make early improvements, or helps to refine or improve the game or technology. This is a type of evaluations that helps to form the design of the technology, product, or service. It might help in detecting and eliminating early-stage problems, as well as answering questions such as which strategy can be used to improve the technology, product, or service. However, this comes with many challenges, and this course will provide various theoretical- and specific methodological approaches for how to perform formative user evaluations.

The course will have a special focus on how to perform user evaluations of serious games, gamification, and other design-oriented artefact and technologies. Course participants will be introduced to in-depth research and foundation of how to make a successful user evaluations. An essential focus of the PhD course is how to perform and document solid and advanced user evaluations with improved validity and reliability. The course will also provide a theoretical foundation (definitions) and applied (how to measure) overview of concepts of e.g., engagement, motivation, flow, immersion, and gamification within a context of game research, evaluations, and mixed methods.