Educational game
In short A game designed to teach particular knowledge or skills, usually from a school subject.
Definition
An educational game is a game designed to teach specific knowledge or skills, usually ones that belong to a school subject or curriculum. It is the oldest and largest branch of the serious game, running from The Oregon Trail in classrooms to algebra puzzles on tablets. The design problem is always the same: the lesson must live inside the game's rules and feedback, so that playing well and understanding the subject become the same act. When the lesson sits beside the game instead, as a quiz rewarded with a short burst of play, the result is what designers call chocolate-covered broccoli: neither good teaching nor a good game.
Not to be confused with
- Game-based learning
Game-based learning is a teaching method that can use any game, including commercial ones, while an educational game is an object made to teach.
- Serious game
Serious game is the wider category; an educational game is the kind of serious game whose purpose is teaching a subject.
- Training game
A training game aims at performance in a specific job or situation, while an educational game aims at understanding a body of knowledge.
- Gamification
A gamified lesson adds points and badges to ordinary schoolwork, while an educational game turns the subject itself into a game.
Where the game lives
- rules: used
- goals: used
- feedback: used
- uncertainty: dropped
- choice: used
- play: used
Educational games tend to tame uncertainty, since a lesson needs a dependable path to mastery. The strongest ones put the subject into the rules and feedback; the weakest keep play as a reward handed out after the learning is done.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
The Oregon TrailMECC, 1985
The Apple II version of a 1971 classroom game about westward migration, played in American schools for a generation.
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?Broderbund, 1985
A detective chase that made geography the means of catching the culprit.
DragonBox Algebra 5+WeWantToKnow, 2012
A puzzle game that gradually turns its cards and creatures into the symbols of algebraic equations.
In the essays
No essay takes this term on directly yet. Its neighbors in the guide are linked above; the newsletter announces new essays.
Sources
- PaperMotivating children to learn effectively: Exploring the value of intrinsic integration in educational games. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2011. Experimental evidence that learning content built into the core mechanics teaches better than content added alongside them.
- BookWhat Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Reading list
- BookSerious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. Thomson Course Technology, 2005. Reading list