Analyses of 5 different edu-games

Today I looked into several different web based edu-games to see what I can find in regards to the styles of learning or teaching contained within them.

Firstly I looked into the Barclays Code Playground.

This game is geared to the younger generation ages 6+ but is also good for older students too. You are presented at the beginning with large colourful instructions and then plunged into the screen you can see above. You then click on any of the elements to bring up the objects code. The code is clearly separated via different colours and is all written with correct syntax to help you get familiar with the look and format. The elements you can modify are highlighted in boxes and the //comments explain their use. Players find the fun in this game by exploring all the different things you can do and all the different elements. The screen has lots happening at once and this helps hold attention. It relies heavily on the student curiosity to teach however this was shown in TV adverts as being played with someone guiding the player/student through the experience. This is a great way of keeping students engaged.


Secondly I looked at the Blood Typing Game.

This game is aimed at older individuals but can be enjoyed by younger players/students also. The game takes you step by step through the process of taking blood from a patient and then analysing it (in the simplest form) by dropping it into three solutions to ascertain the patients blood type. The actions up until this point are all pretty much standard and there is no lose condition. The blood samples can be looked at in more detail to get a better understanding of the topic however this step can by bypassed easily and sometime unintentionally. You are then asked to transfuse the patient with the correct blood (wrong blood will injure them where as the correct blood will heal them giving you instant feedback to your actions) In doing this it forces you to try different blood bags to which you would obviously go for and teaches you via trial and error (and some pattern recognition) which blood types are compatible. The only prior knowledge I had that helped was that O is a universal donor.

Next I looked at Pavlov's Dog.

This game does not teach you directly. There is no real intro other than the goal of making the dog salivate on command. Without prior knowledge of Pavilion's Dog then you are left confused by this game. I used a tester for this one as I know the process and they couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do. If you manage to reach the goal then you are presented with an information screen depicting the process you have just gone through. The game tries to use exploration and experimentation to convey its lesson however I feel this was unsuccessful due to its lac of direction to the player.

The Transistor Game was the next game I played.

This game is trying to teach players what household objects have transistors within them. It does this by delivering a large tutorial block of text telling you to remove any items from the conveyor belt that do not contain transistors with no indication as to which these might be. If you remove transistor containing items there is no feedback until the end where it says you shouldn't have removed them in the summery of your play through. If you leave a non transistor containing object on the belt it will be stopped in the window and an angry lady comes up with text scolding you for leaving it on the belt. This game is another example of trail and error however only half of the errors are picked up meaning that by the time the summery page is up the player wont remember removing them (and all of them not just one) and that's even if they read the summery page which I personally often don't. I also feel the scolding lady is a poor choice for feed back. Being politely told is a far better motivator than being told off for doing something wrong. I feel getting things wrong is all part of learning and players should not be made to feel defeated by doing so.

The final game I looked at was The Split Brain Experiment.

This game had a lengthy into that taught you by telling you things. For example it had a brain in a bowl and then Mr. Split Brain sniffed it and poked it, to which you are informed that the brain doesn't smell of much and is gooey. You then experiment by showing different sides of the brain slides on a projector. This shows you how experimentation is used to ascertain information, in this case it was which half of the brain is responsible for different functions. This actually is a key part of upper key stage 2 curriculum as the ability to distil results from is a statutory requirement in the subject of science. The game then takes the player to the project proposal screen with lots of waiting for replies which I think is to symbolise the amount of waiting that happens in the real world but in the game just breaks flow and becomes tedious. The actual proposal however has you selecting pre determined words to fill in sections describing your findings which reinforces the distillation of information and results required by the KS2 curriculum. This game focuses purely on experimentation and exploration to teach.

Of the 5 games I found several ways of learning and teaching among them. In the Barclays Code Playground players learn from the curiosity and exploration from the sandbox nature of the application. In The Blood Typing Game players learn by being lead through a process and then latter in the game through trail and error. The Split Brain Game and Pavlov's Dog Game both try to teach by having the player experiment, however The Split Brain Game seems to achieve this as it takes you on a path with predetermined experimentation points along with instant player feedback when doing so. All of these methods are valid and when gamifying the different learning outcomes I chose I will try and use each in a controlled way to see if any particular style of teaching/learning stands out above the rest.



References

Barclays Code Playground. 2015. Barclays Code Playground. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.barclays.co.uk/DigitalEagles/BarclaysCodePlayground/P1242686640999. [Accessed 17 October 2015].

The Blood Typing Game. 2015. The Blood Typing Game. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/bloodtypinggame/game/index.html. [Accessed 17 October 2015].

Pavlov's Dog. 2015. Pavlov's Dog. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/pavlov.html. [Accessed 17 October 2015].

The Transistor - Recycler. 2015. The Transistor - Recycler. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/transistor/recycler/index.html. [Accessed 17 October 2015].

The Split Brain Experiments. 2015. The Split Brain Experiments. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/splitbrainexp.html. [Accessed 17 October 2015].