Finding Appropriate Serious Games in Vocational Education and Training: A Conceptual Approach

This paper addresses how to match serious games to vocational education and training (VET) needs, a challenge made more urgent by technological change that is reshaping jobs and skill requirements, particularly for low-skilled and older workers. The authors evaluated five occupational classification systems, namely ISCO-08, KldB 2010, the occupational segments/sectors model, the BIBB occupational fields, and WZ 2008, and recommend the BIBB occupational fields classification as the best fit on the basis of its empirical validation, grounding in current labor-market data, explicit skill-level dimension, and compatibility with ISCO-08. The KldB 2010 is identified as a strong alternative given its practical relevance and international compatibility, though it is organized mainly by occupational specialization rather than main activity.

The authors propose a three-tier classification for matching serious games to vocational training, consisting of 20 occupational main fields, 50 occupational fields, and 20 main activities. Derived from the KldB 2010 and aligned with the BIBB/QuBe framework, this structure is designed to give a manageable overview of the labor market while preserving skill-level information. It is incorporated into the SG-MDF metadata standard (DIN SPEC 91380) as a VET application profile, and the SG-IC portal has been extended with occupational search filters and a metadata editor so that users can locate games by occupational field and main activity, illustrated with a security-oriented game.

The work is methodological rather than empirical, and it reports no quantitative findings on game effectiveness or learner outcomes. Its contribution lies in establishing a classification and metadata framework for discovery and retrieval of serious games in VET settings. The stated next steps include testing the approach within the SG4BB project, with public availability planned from September 2022, developing middleware for real-time integration between games and learning management systems, and assessing game quality against established criteria to refine the SG-MDF and SG-IC.