Development Of Educational Video Games Research Articles

NanoAdventure: Development of a Text-Based Adventure Game in English, Spanish, and Chinese for Communicating about Nanotechnology and the Nanoscale.

Video games and immersive, narrative experiences are often called upon to help students understand difficult scientific concepts, such as sense of scale. However, the development of educational video games requires expertise and, frequently, a sizable budget. Here, we report on the use of an interactive text-style video game, NanoAdventure, to communicate about sense of scale and nanotechnology to the public. NanoAdventure was developed on an open-source, free-to-use platform with simple coding and enhanced with free or low-cost assets. NanoAdventure was launched in three languages (English, Spanish, Chinese) and compared to textbook-style and blog-style control texts in a randomized study. Participants answered questions on their knowledge of nanotechnology and their attitudes toward nanotechnology before and after reading one randomly assigned text (textbook, blog, or NanoAdventure game). Our results demonstrate that interactive fiction is effective in communicating about sense of scale and nanotechnology as well as the relevance of nanotechnology to a general public. NanoAdventure was found to be the most "fun" and easy to read of all text styles by participants in a randomized trial. Here, we make the case for interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure" style games as another effective tool among educational game models for chemistry and science communication.

Design methodology for educational games based on graphical notations: Designing Urano

Serious games, especially educational games, have proliferated in the last decade, with many proven benefits. However, there are very few methodological proposals for educational video game development, and the proposals analyzed in this paper display certain drawbacks that limit their application. This article therefore presents a new methodology for developing educational games based on graphical notations and divided in six phases: design of chapters, design of scenes (scenarios, characters, actions and dialogues), design of educational challenges in the game, design of the adaptation, design of the emotional experience and design of collaboration. This methodology seeks a balance between the overall and the detailed view required to create the game. In order to achieve this, the methodology moves between different levels of abstraction and deconstructs the process into phases and steps that structure this complex task and which can be understood by non-technical members of the multidisciplinary team. The methodology is applied to a video game that is currently in development and serves to illustrate the proposal. Furthermore, important concepts when designing the narrative of the story of the game and to evaluate it, including the expected emotional reactions, are discussed in this article.

Interdisciplinary Projects in the Academic Studio

We define and describe the academic studio model for interdisciplinary, undergraduate, project-oriented education. This model brings faculty, students, and community partners together to investigate an open-ended academic question, and their collaboration yields an original product that represents their inquiry. The academic studio integrates agile software development practice, project-oriented pedagogy, and sociocultural cognition theories. Scrum provides the framework in which self-organizing, cross-functional teams define their methodology, and Scrum practices facilitate assessment of student learning outcomes. This model emerged from design-based research across six studio instances, each of which investigated the relationship of fun, games, and learning through the development of educational video games. Formal and informal analysis of these instances gives rise to several themes, including the importance of a formalized process to encourage learning and productivity, the critical role of an expert faculty mentor, the need to combine academic and industrial practice to manage the inherent challenges of collaborative software development, and the unique characteristics of learning outcomes arising from this model. We conclude that the academic studio model is beneficial to student learning and faculty development, and we encourage the adoption, adaptation, and evaluation of the model.

English

This paper details the process we went through to develop an educational video game, which includes: research on implementing video games into the classroom, vendor selection, video game design, and curriculum development. Throughout the video game development process, we faced challenges such as budget, time constraint, and varying areas of expertise. This paper serves as a guideline for similar organizations interested in educational video game development.

Fostering Creativity Through Educational Video Game Development Projects: A Study of Contextual and Task Characteristics

The increasing demand for creative individuals in the labor market requires well-prepared professionals, capable of enhancing competitiveness through new ideas and innovative actions. Educational programs should, therefore, rely on approaches and learning environments that foster creativity. In this study, video game development projects were used as an approach to foster creativity in educational contexts. Conceptual frameworks focused on contextual creativity enablers indicate that specific environment and task characteristics can facilitate the development and expression of creativity. This study explored the extent to which students perceived that educational game development projects mimicking real-world dynamics recreated contextual conditions appropriate to foster creativity, and whether they associated these conditions with their self-perceived creativity improvement. Questionnaires were administered to 38 students enrolled in 2 educational game development programs. Findings suggest that video game development creates a remarkable setting to promote and facilitate the expression and development of students' creativity, due to characteristics of the task and of the work environment generated by this activity.

A visual language for the creation of narrative educational games

This paper presents a DSVL that simplifies educational video game development for educators, who do not have programming backgrounds. Other solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of educational video game development have been proposed, but simple to use approaches tailored to the specific needs of educators are still needed. We use a multidisciplinary approach based on visual language and narrative theory concepts to create an easy to understand and maintain description of games. This language specifically targets games of the adventure point-and-click genre. The resulting DVSL uses an explicit flow representation to help educational game authors (i.e. educators) to design the story-flow of adventure games, while providing specific features for the integration of educational characteristics (e.g. student assessment and content adaptation). These highly visual descriptions can then be automatically transformed into playable educational video games.

Design of educational multiplayer videogames: A vision from collaborative learning

Videogames and their specific devices can be used to improve learning process since they are very attractive for children. In this way, pupils increase their cognitive skills, the time dedicated to learn, their motivation for learning, their concentration and their attention while they are working/playing. The subject of ''learning by play'' is behind the introduction of recreational educational techniques in the classroom. If we also consider the increasing presence of new technologies in society in general and in classrooms in particular, we encounter a new way of teaching/learning. Moreover, several studies in the area of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) have proved that learning in a group environment (both actively and interactively) is much more productive for pupils than traditional education. Our main objective is to reduce the complexity of introducing the collaborative learning techniques into development of educational videogames. So, in this paper we analyze the use of videogames as a particular case of new technologies in the classroom and we present a set of design guidelines to enable us to incorporate the features of collaborative learning in the videogame development process. We also explore how these guidelines affect the videogame architecture and how they can be applied when designing a videogame. As a practical example of using our proposal we have designed an educational videogame with group activities which aim is to learn the vowels.

Maintenance-oriented design and development: a case study

Maintenance efforts are the most time and resource consuming of the entire software development process. The authors propose a different point of view that shifts the traditional perspective and thinks of the implementation stage as maintenance as well. They present a case study of the development of educational video games for children to determine the proposed method's benefits and drawbacks in this domain.