Scholarly record

THE LOCALIZATION OF THE CULTURE IN THE SERIOUS COMPUTER GAME (PROJECT GABALL): QUALITATIVE EVALUATION MATRIX

Audrone Poskiene

Abstract

The contemporary education-cooperation process around the world enables every researcher to join various international projects that investigate different problems or create a product that could be used by different communities. The number of projects is so huge that they could be classified according to some criteria as a research material. They could even become cultural ambassadors that promote the cultural identity and uniqueness. The question was if the project platform was used effectively and how it could be evaluated. The international (partners: Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Greece, Brazil) project GABALL and its e-product were chosen as a text for the localization of cultural elements. The project GABALL was completed in 2014. It was a serious computer based project. Its aim was to create an e-platform for learning internationalization and language skills. The project outlined possible cultural differences that could be learned with the help of the project scenarios putting the learners in various business based situations. So, the research aim was to create a methodologically based tool for the qualitative evaluation of the identified localized cultural elements. The tool was based on an evaluation matrix methodology. The horizontal axis was six project scenarios and the vertical axis was the cultural elements (values, language, traditions, beliefs, symbols). Each matrix cell revealed the criteria of the localized cultural element. The results revealed that the project scenarios (texts and tasks) were not effectively used promoting the cultural elements. Some of them (stereotypes) were expressed rather efficiently and the others (language: idioms, cliches, etc.) had only a hint of being culturally different.

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