Serious games adoption in corporate training

Corporate managers are constantly looking for more effective and efficient ways to deliver training to their employees. Traditional classroom methods have been used for a long time. However, in the last decade electronic learning technology has gained in significance. Serious Games are games that educate, train and inform using entertainment principles, creativity, and technology. Serious Games are proven as a learning method for conveying skills on complex tasks by incorporating sound learning and pedagogical principles into their design and structure. Therefore, it is believed that Serious Games have got the potential to be used to meet government or corporate training objectives. However, the awareness and adoption level of serious games by industry is not known. In this research we designed and conducted a pilot survey among UK-based companies. We used the survey in order to assess the level of awareness and adoption of Serious Games in companies for corporate training. We aim to understand what kinds of skills development Serious Games-based trainings are desired by companies and to know what they perceive the benefits and barriers of using Serious Games are in companies. This paper describes the stages of the design of the survey questionnaire, presents and analyses the results and ends with conclusions and a discussion about the future research work.