Designing and Evaluating Engaging Interfaces for Educational Games

学生参与对于创造有效的学习体验非常重要。然而，留住数字本土的千禧一代学生参与学习正变得越来越具有挑战性。与通过玩电子游戏沉浸在其中的世界相比，这一代人可能会觉得传统的学校和工作环境很无聊。为了应对这一日益增长的挑战，游戏被引入课堂，但在实现教育目标方面效果参差不齐。在一定程度上，这可能是因为教育游戏领域的研究努力往往专注于学习任务，而忽视了用户的游戏体验。虽然人们对娱乐游戏吸引人的因素有一些理解，但这项研究是不连贯的，而且这些知识中的许多都未能进入教育领域。从娱乐游戏中仍然可以学到很多东西，以鼓励学生参与学习。例如，反馈作为一种鼓励参与的潜在机制，在这方面没有得到严格的研究。同样，尽管人们意识到，一个人参与的东西可能不会影响另一个人，但这些个人差异并没有得到充分的研究和利用，以增强体验。

Student engagement is important in creating effective learning experiences. However, it is becoming increasingly challenging to keep the digital-native Millennial generation of students engaged in their learning. This generation may find traditional school and work environments boring when compared to the world they immerse in through playing video games. To address this growing challenge, games have been introduced in the classroom but have shown mixed results in meeting educational objectives. In part, this may be due to the fact that research efforts in the area of educational games often focus on the learning tasks but neglect the user's gameplay experience. While there is some understanding of what may make entertainment games engaging, this research is disjointed and much of this knowledge has failed to make its way into the educational field. There is still much that can be learned from entertainment gaming to encourage engagement in student learning. For example, feedback as a potential mechanism to encourage engagement has not been rigorously studied in this context. Similarly, while there is a realization that what engages one individual may not engage another, these individual differences have not been adequately studied and leveraged to enhance experiences.