The Development and Preliminary Evaluation of an Educational Game for Online Flight Reservation Services That Involves Real Person-NPCs

Abstract

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, distant learning has become a norm. In this study, a situated learning game “Ticketing Expert” was designed, combining the real person-NPC mechanism to provide a highly realistic travel agency environment and atmosphere. In the game, the real person-NPCs play the customer, which allow the learners to be immersed in the travel agency’s ticketing department and simulate the interaction between the ticketing staffs and customers for enhancing learners’ ticketing and communication capabilities. The preliminary study investigated the learners’ flow state and their acceptance of the game. The results showed that the game-based learning mechanism could effectively enhance the flow of the learners, enabling them to be highly concentrated. And the learners highly agreed with the idea of using the game to help them learn in the ticketing field.