Taking Games to School: Exploratory Study to Support Game-Based Teaching and Learning In High-School Science Classes

研究表明，教育游戏可以提高学生的科学学习，但目前的工作让教师依赖于研究人员和游戏公司提供良好的游戏和基于游戏的课程。该项目旨在研究教师如何参与使科学学习游戏更有效，以及教育科学游戏如何更好地支持良好的教学。该项目正在构建一套软件工具，包括对游戏活动的屏幕录音进行注释的工具，用于提供学生在游戏中学习信息的教师数据仪表板，以及帮助教师定制游戏活动以更好地与课程标准保持一致的工具。它将用成功的研究型教育游戏学习科学，以及从BrainPOP等网站上流行的教育游戏进行研究，这些游戏是由有在课堂上使用预制游戏的经验的教师组成的网络进行的。该项目将查明这些新工具是否能够改善教学和/或学习。它还将帮助制定一份教师需要的定制选项类型的清单，以便能够在课堂上有效地使用教育游戏。如果成功，这项研究可能会为新的工具指明方向，这些工具允许教师创建活动，将任何游戏变成教育游戏，并在课堂上更好地利用现有的教育游戏。这可以极大地加快我们通过教育游戏提供高质量学习体验的能力。这个项目涉及一个参与式设计过程，在这个过程中，少数有经验的教师将对工具(注释、数据仪表板和关卡构建器)的原型进行原则性的迭代改进，以在Brainplay套件中进行原型制作。在Beta测试阶段，将对25个教室的学生和教师结果进行分层线性模型分析。除了定量分析外，还将进行涉及课堂观察、焦点小组和教师日记的定性研究，以检查对教学实践的影响并完善功能规范。项目传播将通过围绕先前开发的升级游戏(每周约玩10,000次)的社区和现有的专业网络进行，如Edmodo。该项目还将在游戏社区内工作，以帮助提供可能的方法来记录学习数据，并允许教师对所有游戏进行定制。

Research shows that educational games can enhance students' science learning, but current work leaves teachers dependent on researchers and games companies to provide good games and game-based curricula. This project aims to study how teachers can be involved in making science learning games more effective, and how educational science games can better support good teaching. This project is building a set of software tools, including a tool for annotating screen recordings of activities in games, a teacher data dashboard for information about students' in-game learning, and tools to help teachers customize activities in games to better align with curricular standards. It will conduct studies with successful research-based educational games for learning science, and popularly available educational games from websites such as BrainPop, in a network of teachers who have experience using 'canned' games in their classrooms. The project will find out whether these new tools can enhance teaching and/or learning. It will also help develop a list of the types of customization options teachers need in order to be able to effectively use educational games in their classrooms. If successful, this research could point the way towards new tools that let teachers create activities that turn any game into an educational game, and to better use existing educational games in their classrooms. This could greatly speed up our ability to deliver high-quality learning experiences through educational games.This project involves a participatory design process in which a small number of experienced teachers will feed into a principled, iterative refinement of prototypes of the tools (annotation, data dashboard, and level-builder) to be prototyped within the Brainplay suite. In the beta testing phase, a hierarchical linear model analysis will be conducted on both student and teacher outcomes in 25 classrooms. In addition to the quantitative analysis, qualitative studies involving classroom observations, focus groups, and teacher journaling will be conducted to examine impact on teaching practices and refine the functional specifications. Project dissemination will take place through the community around the previously-developed Leveling Up games (played around 10,000 times per week), and through existing professional networks such as Edmodo. The project will also work within the games community to help inform possible approaches to logging learning data and allowing teacher customization across all games.