Hands-on, learning in games - Serious Games - Spring 2009

Contents

Slides

Overview of Today's Class [1/3, 2009/04/09]

• Hands-on with WoW, focus on Gee's principles
• Background on next reading

Hands-on [2/3, 2009/04/09]

General idea: players (newbie, intermediate, advanced) play game, others write down application of principles

Co-design:

• Learning goals:
• deepen your understanding of Gee's principles
• encourage reflection on how they relate to serious game design
• Challenge: How do I make this motivating and effective for you?
• Suggestions?

Reading for next time [3/3, 2009/04/09]

Simulations and games in e-learning

• Chapter 15 in book "e-learning and the Science of Instruction"
• Based on:
• information processing model of cognition
• limited resources of memory, processing, attention
• channels of input
• empirical learning research: many experiments about what helps, hurts learning

Clark and Mayer's e-learning principles

1. multimedia: text plus graphics
2. modality: audio narration explaining graphics
3. contiguity: relevant text near graphics
4. coherence: no extras!
5. redundancy: don't show text for audio narration
6. personalization: use information language, agents
7. practice/encoding specificity: learning is contextualized
8. varied context and far transfer: further transfer requires more varied practice