Disciplinary integration of digital games for science learning

The current study is an exploratory study into the potential of integrating research on worked examples and physics games. Students were assigned to either a base version of a physics game, called the Fuzzy Chronicles, or assigned to a version of the Fuzzy Chronicles augmented with worked examples. Students in both conditions demonstrated signiicant gains on the pre-post-test, but students in the base game version demonstrated signiicantly greater gains than the students in the worked example version.The results from the current study reinforce results from other studies by our research group demonstrating how important it is that scafolds based on multimedia research (a) do not over scafold the student or promote passive, automatic behaviors, (b) do not excessively detract from the student's gameplay time, and (c) do not disrupt game cognition and low.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worked Examples in Physics Games: Challenges in Integrating Proven Cognitive Scaffolds into Game Mechanics

Adams¹,

Clark²,

Virk³

2018

“…(3) What are the implications of these observations for teachers and game designers? (Figures 1 and 2) is the prototypical DIG template that we used in this study, and is the result of evolution of design, research, and thinking chronicled in Clark et al [4,5]. Whereas earlier versions of SURGE supported reflection on the results of game play through formal representations as a means to support strategy refinement, the formal representations were not the medium through which players planned, implemented, and manipulated their game strategies.…”

Section: Internal and External Scaffoldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) such that players' actions in the game focus on iteratively developing and manipulating formal representations as the core game mechanics [4,5]. These formal representations are computational and mathematized representations of focal science phenomena.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Krinks¹,

Johnson²,

Clark³

2018

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."

“…Developing environments from Science as Practice perspectives [4][5][6][7] that engage students in modeling would seem to hold great promise. Toward these goals, we have proposed DisciplinarilyIntegrated Games as one such approach [8][9]. As proposed in Clark et al [8], disciplinary integration is an approach to designing games in terms of a science as practice perspective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Toward these goals, we have proposed DisciplinarilyIntegrated Games as one such approach [8][9]. As proposed in Clark et al [8], disciplinary integration is an approach to designing games in terms of a science as practice perspective. More specifically, disciplinary integration can be thought of in terms of "model types" and "modeling strategies" [10], which Collins and colleagues have termed "epistemic forms" and "epistemic games" in earlier work [11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplayer Disciplinarily-Integrated Agent-Based Games: SURGE Gameblox

Clark¹,

Medlock-Walton²,

Boquín³

et al. 2018

Early work on disciplinary-integrated games (DIGs) focused on Cartesian time-series analyses as the formal representations through which the game communicates challenges and opportunities to the players as well as the formal representations through which the players control the game. In our earlier work, we explored the potential generalizability of the DIG genre in terms of hypothetical examples in physics, biology, chemistry, and the social sciences as well as in terms of multiple model types including constraint-system analyses, system dynamics models, situation-action models, and agent-based models. In particular, Sengupta and Clark and Krinks, Sengupta, and Clark explored the integration of computational modeling, physical models, and Cartesian models. Building on that work, we began outlining theoretical frameworks and arguments highlighting the affordances of moving DIG design more deeply into agent-based modeling. In the current paper, we present the actual design process and rationale through which we developed prototypes of two multiplayer DIG prototypes with agent-based models as the mode of control wherein players create, trade, and elaborate on one another's code as part of gameplay. We close with a discussion of implications for the design of disciplinary-integrated games leveraging agent-based modeling as the focal formal representation for communication and control.