Jason Haas

Fun and Learning: Blending Design and Development Dimensions in Serious Games through Narrative and Characters

This chapter describes the development of four versions of a game for learning and comparative study carried out in a Singapore high school to shed light on the effectiveness of puzzle and narrative-based games in engaging students, their learning experience and understanding of the physics concepts of displacement and velocity. In particular, it describes the introduction of an off-screen character to help reach a synergy of fun and learning, through an optimal blend of design and development dimensions. The off-screen character achieves this through narration of an extended narrative/story intertwined with aspects of the learning topics. In this way the character’s purpose is twofold; firstly, as part of the narrative/story and secondly, as learning partner or assistant. Results from the study demonstrate that while some aspects of learning were comparable from both the puzzle and narrative versions of the game, the narrative versions provided a flexible and powerful approach to introduce technical/scientific terms and language associated with the topics of learning. In addition, players consistently rated the narrative versions as being more fun, more exciting, and more engaging. While relatively simple, it is argued that this approach is cost-effective and accessible in informing academics and teachers in schools in customizing their own virtual environments, simulations, games for learning, serious games, and commercially available off-the-shelf titles (COTS) with topics from the curriculum.

Fun and learning: the power of narrative

This paper describes the results of a comparative study carried out in a Singapore High School to test four versions of our game for learning, to investigate the effectiveness of puzzle and narrative-based games in engaging students, how the games affect their learning experience and their understanding of the physics concepts of displacement and velocity.n It outlines the development of four game versions and in particular, describes the introduction of an off-screen character to help reach a synergy of fun and learning through an optimal blend of design and development dimensions (e.g. constructionist and instructionist learning, hidden/incidental and direct/explicit learning). The off-screen character achieves this through narration of an extended narrative/story intertwoven with aspects of the learning topics -- displacement and velocity. In this way the characters purpose is twofold; firstly, as part of the storyline and secondly, as learning partner or assistant.

@Stake: A Game to Facilitate the Process of Deliberative Democracy

Public engagement in government decision-making is often hindered by a lack of diversity, underutilization of digital tools, and unclear feedback mechanisms âx80x93 a problem made acute in the context of historically low levels of trust in American government [5]. But one thread of democratic innovation is in mini-publics for deliberation and discussion. Games are a productive mechanism for this. @Stake is a game designed to build deliberative capacity through role-play and ideation. The present research examines the use of @Stake within a Participatory Budgeting process and presents evidence that it leads to increased empathy and creativity in the civic process.

Blended in-game and off-game learning: assimilating serious games in the classroom and curriculum

This paper describes a comparative study to investigate the efficacy of interactive games, non-interactive media and traditional instructional teaching on mathematics and science learning with high school students (aged 13-14). Utilizing a blended in-game (narrative and puzzle games) and off-game (machinima/animation and teacher) learning approach to assess the efficacy, together with survey of teachers opinions on the introduction of serious games and blended learning approaches, the results shed some light on the integration / assimilate of serious games into the classroom and curriculum.

User Behavior in NBC News' Multimedia Educational Site, iCue

This paper investigates what happened when iCue, an educational multimedia website from NBC News, was opened to the public. Who used the site, how did they use it, and what patterns can be gleaned about their usage? iCue was developed by NBC News in order to enter the education market and to connect young people with the news. The effort was based on the growing quantitative evidence base that young people are extensively participating in new media and networked technology. We found patterns consistent with other research on Internet sites and speculate on the implications for learning games and for archival media sites. Please view this article on IJLM.net: http://ijlm.net/10.1162/IJLM_a_00070.