Study: Action Adventure Games Best for Online Education
In one of the more interesting studies to cross the transom lately, researchers indicated action adventure games are best for educational purposes thanks to their flexibility. A number of subjects can be presented in the genre, and a wide variety of educational activities can occur. The story lines in these games present multiple opportunities for teachable moments. Here is the abstract:
The use of educational games in learning environments is an increasingly relevant trend. The motivational and immersive traits of game-based learning have been deeply studied in the literature, but the systematic design and implementation of educational games remain an elusive topic. In this study some relevant requirements for the design of educational games in online education are analyzed, and a general game design method that includes adaptation and assessment features is proposed. Finally, a particular implementation of that design is described in light of its applicability to other implementations and environments.
The study was led by Pablo Moreno-Ger, over at U. Complutense de Madrid in Spain. Alas, the article is behind a pay-per-view firewall. ACM Portal has the abstract and references here. A nice write-up can be found at ScienceDaily here. Another paper by the Moreno-Ger team was published last month entitled Model Checking for Adventure Games.
References:
Moreno-Ger, P., Burgos, D., Martínez-Ortiz, I., Sierra, J. L., & Fernández-Manjón, B. (2008, September). Educational game design for online education. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(6). 2530-2540.
Update: Dr. Moreno-Ger pointed out in the comments the paper’s final draft is online at their university here.
Tags: action adventure games, game design, game pedagogy
Game Discussion, Game Writing, Making Video Games, Research, Video Game Research | John Rice | 
April 2, 2009 5:50 am
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Liberal Education Today : Educational games, adventure games — April 9, 2009 @ 6:52 pm
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By Chris Brannigan, April 8, 2009 @ 4:07 am
Thanks for the link. Interesting study. Love to see the full paper. Have to see if Pablo appears in a conference soon.
By Pablo Moreno Ger, April 15, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
Thank you for the quote. If anyone is interested, we have the final draft available at the e-UCM archive: http://www.e-ucm.es/