Play with Purpose: A Heuristic Approach to Evaluating Tabletop Serious Games for Academic Integrity Education

"Play with Purpose" presents a heuristic evaluation framework for tabletop serious games and applies it to CiteSaga, a board game designed to teach citation, referencing, and academic integrity skills to students at North-West University in South Africa. The work is motivated by the observation that formal citation instruction is offered only in first and third year, and that conventional teaching methods have not adequately reduced common citation errors. The framework is positioned within an evolving body of serious game evaluation research that has moved from purely theoretical models toward approaches emphasizing usability, accessibility, and domain-specific criteria.

The empirical evaluation involved 151 students and focused initially on four dimensions: learning experience, features, play experience, and learning and feedback. Participants responded favorably, with 80% expressing interest in playing, 68% judging the game's objectives aligned with their university experience, and 78% believing they would gain greater knowledge of citation styles. Later feedback reinforced these results, with 83% of participants finding the game interesting and 89% reporting that its instructions were clear. Participatory design proved consequential, as participant input directly shaped gameplay mechanics, storyline, and educational content, while user-based heuristic evaluation identified clear instructions, quality graphics, and ease of use as central to the experience.

Results on demonstrated learning were more modest. Fifty-two percent of respondents showed mastery of the educational objectives, and 78% anticipated gaining knowledge of citation styles and academic ethics, a gap that underscores the difference between perceived and measured learning. The study identified areas for improvement, including more frequent and personalized feedback, adaptive learning paths, and clearer instructions. Accessibility, utility, adaptability, and social dynamics were deferred to future testing, leaving those dimensions unevaluated in the current work. The authors conclude that CiteSaga was generally well received, but that further statistical analysis and visual refinement are necessary before its effectiveness and accessibility can be firmly established.