The Challenges of using Commercial- Off-the-Shelf Narrative Games in History Classrooms

---

Eberhardt Richard Caldwell Kyrie Eleison
2016 DiGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the 2016 Playing With History Workshop

As part of an Arthur Vining Davis-funded project conducted by the MIT Education Arcade, the author designed a lesson plan for a Lynn, MA teacher’s 9th grade World History class, focused on the beginning of her World War 1 unit. This plan utilized a commercial, offthe- shelf game, The Last Express (Mechner 1997), originally developed and published for entertainment purposes. The lesson plan was developed to test the feasibility of using storybased narrative games with historical elements as a prelude to a critical writing exercise. The test was to see how students reacted to the game, both as a gameplay exercise and as a source of content, and whether students would be able make logical connections between the game and their other non-game classwork. This paper outlines the research that went into designing this lesson plan and identifies challenges educators might face bringing these games into their classrooms.

 

A Survey of Final Project Courses in Game Programs: Considerations for Teaching Capstone

---

Zagal José P. Sharp John
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Game design and development programs often include a final project or capstone course as a means of assessing the cumulative theory, processes and techniques learned by students through the program or department’s curriculum. While these courses are prevalent in programs around the world, there has yet to be a study of how, why, and to what end these courses are designed and run. We review the literature on capstone courses, discuss the findings of a long-form survey administered in early 2011, and propose a set of framing questions for the design and implementation of capstone courses. Survey findings include common goals of capstone courses, make-up of faculty teaching these courses, the support obtained and desired for the courses, the technologies used to create capstone projects, the methods of project management used in the courses and the expectations of faculty teaching the courses.