Developing Empathy Quest: A Digital Game Based Learning Tool About Teachers’ Emotional Intelligence

Socio-emotional skills are essential for teachers’ wellbeing, classroom functioning, and promotion of students’ social–emotional development. Digital game-based learning (DGBL) represents a promising approach to promote these competencies through engaging and experiential learning processes. Empathy Quest is a DGBL experience—aimed at fostering emotional intelligence—designed by a multidisciplinary group involving game design, educational psychology, media communication, and teaching expertise. An exploratory evaluation involved 83 teachers in training (74 female; mean age = 46.11 years). Our research questions inquired about teachers’ perceptions of Empathy Quest in terms of game enjoyment, user experience, motivation toward DGBL, and interest in emotional intelligence. After completing a gameplay session, participants filled in the individual interest questionnaire, situational motivation scale, intrinsic motivation inventory, user experience questionnaire, and ad hoc items. Descriptive analyses indicated high levels of motivation, enjoyment, and interest in emotional intelligence. Participants also reported positive user experiences in terms of attractiveness, novelty, and stimulation, alongside good ratings for dependability, perspicuity, and efficiency. Although the post-test-only design does not allow for causal conclusions, the findings suggest that Empathy Quest is a promising tool for engaging future teachers with emotional intelligence and may support the integration of socio-emotional learning into teacher education and professional development contexts.