Digital Games in the Science Classroom: Leveraging Internal and External Scaffolds during Game Play

Abstract

We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) to support students in interpreting, translating, and manipulating across formal representations in the domain of Newtonian kinematics. In this study, we seek to understand what game play looks like in a classroom context with particular attention given to how students leverage internal and external scaffolds to progress through the game and deepen their conceptual knowledge. We investigate the following questions: (1) In what ways do students interact with the game, with each other, and with their teacher when they play SURGE Symbolic in a classroom environment? (2) How do game scaffolds, both within and outside of the game, support or impede student learning and game play? (3) What are the implications of these observations for teachers and game designers? We found that although most students used internal scaffolds in some way to assist their game play, many found that these scaffolds were insufficient to get through challenges. They quickly sought help from external resources available to them outside the game to help them advance in the game. The source of information they needed to make progress came from various people or resources outside the game, what we are calling "knowers."

Winning Through Deception: A Pedagogical Case Study on Using Social Deception Games to Teach Small Group Communication Theory

“…This definition tends to account for the variance of definitions in ludology (Eskelinen, 2001). The nature of pedagogical simulations tends to 1. build the students' enhanced cognitive skills as those skills relate to course learning objectives (Blumberg et al, 2014), 2. create points of interpretation, translation, and manipulation between the theory and what could be experienced in the real world (Krinks et al, 2018), 3. provide motivation and satisfaction for the efforts that students put toward their academic performance within the classroom setting (Hanus & Fox, 2015), 4. be a combination of the previously listed criteria.…”

“…Almonte, Barkhardori, & Leno, 2014;Hanus & Fox, 2015;Krinks, Johnson, & Clark, 2018) is the concept that gaming in the classroom setting, when done efficiently, represents an asset that educational professionals can use to bridge the theoretical to the practical. Educators can fail to have a full pedagogical toolbox if they fail to understand that games can act a bridging process between the written word and the real world.…”

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“…The effectiveness of SGs on science learning in schools has been studied extensively across an array of learning outcomes (e.g. Hussein, Ow, Cheong, Thong, & Ale Ebrahim, 2019;Krinks, Johnson, & Clark, 2018;Rowe et al, 2017). Rastegarpour & Marashi, (2012) sought to investigate the effects of SGs on chemistry learning and highlighted the instrumental role of play and the active engagement of students with gameplay as opposed to a more passive learning activity observed in the classroom.…”