Shack city - A serious game for apprentices in the field of sanitation, heating and cooling (SHaC)

Abstract

Apprentices in the field of sanitation, heating and cooling face the problem, that in addition to everyday lessons they have to be at the customer's location to help the craftsmen accomplishing their orders. A proper exam preparation is thus not given as they have to study during idle times or after work. This frequently decreases also the motivation to learn. To support their studies, we have developed Shack City, a story based serious game, which lets apprentices in the field of sanitation, heating and cooling study playfully during exam preparation. The first idea of the game was modeled with GLiSMo (Serious Game Structure and Logic Modeling Language) - our domain-specific modeling language for serious game development. Based on these models, we have implemented a first version of Shack City that is currently evaluated with the guild of master craftsmen.