Educators to Sample World of Videogame Design at Workshop
Date Posted: Wed Mar 21 2007
Educators will get a peek into the design and research of an educational videogame at an upcoming workshop sponsored by NASA Langley Research Center and
Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center at Old Dominion University.
Dr. Debbie Denise Reese, senior educational researcher at the Center for Educational Technologies®, will take participants through the design and research involved in
Selene, a new videogame the center and the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future housed there are helping to create. The workshop, which seeks to bring educators up to speed on modeling, simulation, and game-based learning, will be held April 24 on the Old Dominion campus in Suffolk, VA.
Selene, a casual game about lunar science, is designed to help players construct viable, robust, and coherent knowledge about our solar system's fundamental geological processes. It is a collaborative effort by the Classroom of the Future™ the Experimental Game Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Literature, Communication, and Culture; and the University of Florida's Digital Worlds Institute. The game is currently being developed. It will be ready for testing during May, when the Classroom of the Future will conducting a research project for NASA into the effectiveness of videogames as learning tools.
Reese's session will let educators experience firsthand some of the techniques used within the industry to "playtest" a game. It will help participants answer these questions:
- What should I look for in an educational game?
- How can games be designed to support my state and local standards?
- Where/How do games fit within an instructional unit?
- How can games be used to assess learning?
- What is flow, how does it compare to fun, how does it relate to educational games, and how can it inform my practice and help my students to make positive life choices?
- How can my students and I join the community of researchers studying educational games?