Keywords: Game design, game design principles, game design frameworks
What’s the Big Idea: Describes the design of a game aimed at teaching argumentation skills to college students. The paper analyzes the game design using Gee and Clark and Meyer.
Terms to get familiar with: Initial design, play testing, iterative design, learning testing, Gee principles (31 and 13 condensed), Clark/Meyer principles, endogenous and exogenous games.
Research questions/Hypothesis, methods used in research/conclusions: By evaluating the principles laid out by predecessors (Gee, Clark/Meyer), improve the design of the game Advisor to the King, or AttK. The paper evaluates the game on how well it meets the 13 principles from Gee that non-educational video games follow to support learning in three conceptual areas: Empowered Learners, Problem Solving, and Understanding. It was also evaluated against Clark and Meyer’s e-learning effectiveness in five major areas. The conclusion was that even though the two sets of principles have different origins and intentions, the different frameworks largely agree, and the AttK game design was validated by the study.
Research Papers to read from this article:
[3] E. Arnott, P. Hastings, and D. Allbritton. Research methods tutor: Evaluation of a dialogue-based tutoring system in the classroom. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3):694– 672, 2008.
[4] A. Britt, P. Wiemer-Hastings, A. Larson, and C. Perfetti. Using intelligent feedback to improve sourcing and integration in students’ essays. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 14:359–374, 2004.
[5] M. A. Britt and A. Larson. Construction of argument representations during on-line reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 48(4):749–810, 2003.
[6] M. A. Britt, C. Kurby, S. Dandotkar, and C. Wolfe. I agreed with what? Memory for simple argument claims. Discourse Processes, 45(1):52–84, 2008.
[7] J. Gee. Learning by design: Good video games as learning machines. e-Learning, 2005.
[8] R. Clark and R. Mayer. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, chapter Simulations
and Games in e-Learning. Pfeiffer, 2008.
[9] J. Gee. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2003.
What’s the Big Idea: Describes the design of a game aimed at teaching argumentation skills to college students. The paper analyzes the game design using Gee and Clark and Meyer.
Terms to get familiar with: Initial design, play testing, iterative design, learning testing, Gee principles (31 and 13 condensed), Clark/Meyer principles, endogenous and exogenous games.
Research questions/Hypothesis, methods used in research/conclusions: By evaluating the principles laid out by predecessors (Gee, Clark/Meyer), improve the design of the game Advisor to the King, or AttK. The paper evaluates the game on how well it meets the 13 principles from Gee that non-educational video games follow to support learning in three conceptual areas: Empowered Learners, Problem Solving, and Understanding. It was also evaluated against Clark and Meyer’s e-learning effectiveness in five major areas. The conclusion was that even though the two sets of principles have different origins and intentions, the different frameworks largely agree, and the AttK game design was validated by the study.
Research Papers to read from this article:
[3] E. Arnott, P. Hastings, and D. Allbritton. Research methods tutor: Evaluation of a dialogue-based tutoring system in the classroom. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3):694– 672, 2008.
[4] A. Britt, P. Wiemer-Hastings, A. Larson, and C. Perfetti. Using intelligent feedback to improve sourcing and integration in students’ essays. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 14:359–374, 2004.
[5] M. A. Britt and A. Larson. Construction of argument representations during on-line reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 48(4):749–810, 2003.
[6] M. A. Britt, C. Kurby, S. Dandotkar, and C. Wolfe. I agreed with what? Memory for simple argument claims. Discourse Processes, 45(1):52–84, 2008.
[7] J. Gee. Learning by design: Good video games as learning machines. e-Learning, 2005.
[8] R. Clark and R. Mayer. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, chapter Simulations
and Games in e-Learning. Pfeiffer, 2008.
[9] J. Gee. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2003.