A model to analyze and design educational games with pedagogical foundations

ABSTRACT

For years, educational game designers have paid close attention to the development of entertaining experiences for students. Yet, as experts point out, an overwhelming number of projects do not have rigorous Pedagogical foundations. Additionally, many existent educational game design frameworks have a one-size-fits-all approach. That is, they were conceived with a single domain of knowledge in mind or do not consider the personal characteristics of those involved in the learning process. To address these issues, we reviewed multiple case studies and design frameworks, and studied guidelines from Pedagogy. As a result, using techniques from Grounded Theory, we identified key design patterns and features present in educational games that may serve to attain learning goals. With this information, we created a model to analyze existing games and design new educational games with Pedagogical foundations. In this work we present our model, and we discuss our findings, limitations, and future work.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Computers in other domains

    • Personal computers and PC applications

      • Computer games

  • Education

    • Computer-assisted instruction

• Information systems

  • Information systems applications

    • Multimedia information systems

      • Massively multiplayer online games

• Software and its engineering

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Virtual worlds software

        • Interactive games