Digital Library Keyword Archives

educational games

- 19 articles or papers

 

Strategies for Endogenous Design of Educational Games

Athavale Sandeep Dalvi Girish
2019 DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix

Educational game designers strive to fulfill the promise of making learning fun. Games with endogenous design can fulfill this promise. In endogenous design, the gameplay emerges from the content, thus seamlessly integrating the act of playing with learning. However, a review of literature informs us of the lack of guidance on the endogenous design of educational games. There is a need to develop a framework which can aid designers achieve endogenous design. In this paper, we propose strategies for the endogenous design of educational games. We conduct in-situ studies using think-aloud protocol analysis to extract the tacit knowledge that designers discreetly use in practice. We synthesize the extracted knowledge into concise design strategies. The identification of these design strategies is a significant step towards building a framework for endogenous design of educational games.

 

Review of Serious Games Development in Hong Kong (2006-2016)

Wirman Hanna Yi Ren
2016 Chinese DiGRA '16

This paper investigates existing digital games developed and used in Hong Kong for serious needs. Based on a review done online and by interviewing experts in the field, over 300 games were found being used and developed in Hong Kong. The games are mostly available online for free use. The identified games are categorized into eight types based on their general theme. These are health, special needs, awareness raising (for general public), political games, culture, children’s and youth education (all levels), professional training, and marketing and advertisement. While discussing the summarized results of the review, this paper details funding support for serious games and introduces the main contributors to the field in Hong Kong.

 

Sustainable Life Cycle Game Design: Mixing Games and Reality to Transform Education

Harteveld Casper Folajimi Yetunde Sutherland Steven C
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Although educational games have much promise across domains, their use is not widespread due to a lack of dissemination. This lack, combined with the development costs, has led us to identifying a different approach to educational games to increase adoption of games in education. Based on the reflection of two cases, where each tried in its own way to deal with the challenges of current educational game design, we introduce an approach called sustainable life cycle game design, inspired by the cradle-to-cradle® model for product manufacturing without waste. This approach emphasizes mixing existing games and educational activities into the design, mixing the game development with education, and developing with the goal of mixing new games in the future.

 

Gaming Experience as a Prerequisite for the Adoption of Digital Games in the Classroom?

Hoblitz Anna
2015 DiGRA '15 - Proceedings of the 2015 DiGRA International Conference

This paper addresses the question of how the gaming experiences of students and their attitudes towards gaming influence Game-based Learning in formal contexts. Based on the subject-scientific learning theory it explores how digital games can further expansive learning. The aim is to combine these issues to explain learning outcomes with digital games. For this purpose the paper presents the results of an empirical study with an Educational Game in a science class.

 

Testing the Power of Game Lessons: The Effects of Art and Narrative on Reducing Cognitive Biases

Martey Rosa Shaw Adrienne Stromer-Galley Jennifer Kenski Kate Clegg Benjamin Folkestad James Saulnier Emilie Strzalkowski Tomek
2014 DiGRA '14 - Proceedings of the 2014 DiGRA International Conference

Educational games have proliferated, but questions remain about the effectiveness at teaching both in the short- and long-term. Also unclear is whether particular game features have positive effects on learning. To examine these issues, this paper describes a controlled experiment using an educational game that was professionally developed to teach about cognitive biases in decision making (Fundamental Attribution Error, Confirmation Bias, and Bias Blind Spot). This experiment examined the effects of game art and narrative on learning and compared the game conditions to a training video. Effects were measured immediately after the stimuli were given and then again eight weeks later. Results indicate that the educational game outperforms the training video immediately after exposure and that there are significant retention effects. Art and narrative were not significantly related to learning with the exception that minimal art game had a significant positive relationship with mitigating Bias Blind Spot at immediate post-test.

 

Stanislavky’s System as a Game Design Method: A Case Study

Manero Borja Fernández-Vara Clara Fernández-Manjón Baltasar
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

The relationship between theatre and games has been repeatedly discussed (Laurel 1993; Murray 1997; Frasca 2004; El-Nasr 2007;Fernández-Vara 2009), but its possibilities have not been explored in enough depth. This paper goes beyond a theoretical proposal, and describes how Stanislavski’s acting method (1959) served as the inspiration to design a game based on the Spanish classical theatre play, La Dama Boba (The Foolish Lady). The result was a point-and-click adventure game developed with the eAdventure platform, (Torrente, del Blanco, Marchiori, Moreno-Ger, Fernandez-Manjon 2010) a tool to create educational games. The paper provides an overview of the most and least successful aspects of this design method, and how it helped transform a narrative, dramatic in this case, into a digital game.

 

Playing And Learning Without Borders: A Real-time Online Play Environment

Sauvé Louise Kaufman David Sánches Arias V.G. Power M. Villardier L. Probst W.
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Funded by CANARIE Inc., the ENJEUX–S project (ENvironnement évolué de JEUX éducatifs et de Simulations en ligne) aims to develop a real-time communication interface that enriches the environments of educational games and simulations developed in the SAGE project. This interface allows for the exploration of a wealth of real-time interpersonal communications in educational situations which utilize online games and simulations. The elements of the interface are built on a Web services environment which rests on a SOA architecture. This novel approach permits universal broadcasting of games and simulations over the Web without any prior loading of software, assuring an increased accessibility of services, the interoperability of platforms and the re-utilization of components. The advances of the User-Controlled Light Paths (UCLP) CAnet*4 fiber optics network guarantee the ENJEUX-S project the instantaneity of communications and a wider visibility. The project is an extension of current work of the SAGE network. This article presents a brief description of the ENJEUX-S interface, its architecture and the design stages on which its development is based.

 

The Gigue Is Up: High Culture Gets Game

Jenson Jennifer Castell Suzanne de Taylor Nicholas Droumeva Milena Fisher Stephanie
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper documents the design, development, and extensive play-testing of a Flash-based Baroque music game, “Tafelkids: The Quest for Arundo Donax”, focusing on the tension between constructing an online resource that an audience aged 8-14 would find fun and engaging, and the directive to include historical information and facts, as well as convey some of the sounds, musical structures and conventions of Baroque music, history and culture through play. We further document 3 large play testing sessions, in which we observed, in total, over 150 students aged 12-14 play the game. We conclude with a discussion of the particular challenges in designing a bridge from propositions to play, in effect digitally re-mediating, Baroque music education and thereby address the broader epistemological question of what and how we may best learn, and learn best, from games and play.

 

Balancing Three Different Foci in the Design of Serious Games: Engagement, Training Objective and Context

Frank Anders
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Serious games aim to be both fun and playable games but at the same time be useful for a non-entertainment purpose. This poses an interesting challenge to the design process; how can we ensure that the design allows both for fun and engagement while at the same time fulfilling the nonentertainment purpose? The game design for educational games (a branch of serious games) is dependent on the topic (training objective) and under what circumstances the game will be used. We propose a pragmatic design approach where three design goals are maintained simultaneously: (1) to create an engaging game, (2) to properly cater for the training objective, and (3) to allow the training context surrounding the game to influence design decisions. We will go through a range of design issues and show how the three design goals are interdependent and how a balanced design can fulfill all three. For instance, the training objective may impede a straightforward design of rules and goals. The training context will have an affect how the challenges are constructed and the way learning through games can be carried out. To illustrate this approach the design process of Foreign Ground, a serious game for training, is presented and discussed.