Research Notes

Features

1. Creating social interaction – allow only question or a set of questions to be shared with a friend, will use Facebook API in order to communicate with friend. Will show badges, add a timer, and points. In this case, the correct answer will be displayed for both.
2. Academic Reward Structure ExampleThe reward structure will consist of both badges for achievements and currency that the students can spend on purchasing upgrades for their avatar characters. The idea is to use measurement achievements instead of completion achievements to increase intrinsic motivation through feedback.

Process

1. Survey people in your target audience about the type of games they like to play and why they enjoy them. Consider which factors you can incorporate into your game’s design to draw the interest of players and to sustain their interest over time.

Advantages

1. Game-based tests can provide a different model for evaluating success—one in which learners are allowed to retry as many times as necessary to complete the game’s objectives. What matters is the outcome—whether a person has mastered the subject matter or acquired the skill set needed to complete objectives in the game. Applied to a classroom environment or training systems, differentiation between students’ grades can be based on the total number of objectives completed, the difficulties of each of those objectives, and the quality or speed with which they were done. (Playful Design, ‘Advantages for Training and Instruction’)
2. Games can provide an automated way of tailoring instruction to the individual needs, strengths, and interests of different learners, creating scaffolding that gives each player the level of support needed. (Playful Design, ‘Advantages for Training and Instruction’)
3. Failure-based learning offers people the opportunity to understand their failures better, inviting a cycle of critical thinking and problem solving. To increase their chances of success the next time around, learners need to try first, then analyze why what they tried didn’t work, then develop hypotheses about how they can minimize those factors, then try something new, and so on. Failure is an indispensable part of this process because it brings learners closer to the right answers by exposing problems in their reasoning and creating the opportunity to correct those problems.
4. The most traditional application of learning games is as a vehicle for directly communicating subject matter. In this model the game’s purpose is to teach the embedded concepts using a format that’s fun and engaging. In this way the game can be overtly tied to an educational curriculum but create the opportunity for people to learn the subject from the inside as active participants rather than as passive observers.