Learning management models in serious mobile music games

Students seeking to learn musical skills face a highly complex task with a significant cognitive load. Serious games are one method that has been proposed to help manage this complexity. They offer to present content in a fun, attractive, familiar package to increase student's engagement and help them foster self-regulated and independent learning behaviours. In this paper, we examine the ways in which serious mobile games for music facilitate and encourage learning in their players. We call this the learning management model of a game, and it comprises three sub-models: a feedback model, an incentive and achievement model, and a progression model. By defining the models used by existing games, we can understand both how developers are approaching the task of serious game design, how effective their designs might be, and where improvements could be made in the future. We found that many of the choices made by developers indicate a tendency towards implementing functionality that minimises and simplifies the complexity of development. Players are rarely given feedback beyond whether they are correct or incorrect, they are rarely encouraged to or given the means by which to reflect on their performance over time, and they are relied upon to set their own path through content they are, by definition, unfamiliar with. Although the games already offer some educational value and provide benefits over traditional teaching materials, there remains significant scope for improvement in their learning management.