Learn to design vs design to learn: enhancing educational opportunities using game technoloy

Recognizing as children’s input in game design and development process is critical, we applied cooperative inquiry experiences working with young children as game design partners. The computer-based games specifically were designed and developed for the acquisition of survival literacy by 12-14 year old intellectually disabled children. During the design and development game process, children learnt game design techniques without their acknowledgement. Importantly, the development process will be undertaken by the students with the minimum guidance of team members. The experiences, challenges and lesson learned through game design process are discussed.

Make a game or adapt a game

Provides an idea on how to devise a mathematical game for primary students. Requirement of an effective mathematical game; Design of the game; Criteria for judging.

An assessment of game based learning

‬This thesis uses the principles arising from both the literature review and surveys and experiements to further the understanding of game design that supports quality learning. These principles have been used to build two exemplar platforms that on a number of criteria and measures, represent generic principles concerning game-based learning.

Technologies and considerations for developing internet and multiplayer computer games: a tutorial (extended abstract)

Games are universal and probably as old as humankind. Today the development of computer technology, especially the development of fast networks and the Internet, brings games a faster growth than ever before. Game design and development is now a fast-growing entertainment field, with a lot to offer professionally and creatively. In fact, from IT professional’s point of view, creating computer games provides us with all the usual technical challenges associated with software development, such as requirement analysis, architectural design, rapid prototyping, HCI, parallel and distributed processing, code reuse, programming, performance evaluation, testing and maintenance. It also provides challenges on other exciting aspects, such as storyboarding, screenplays, illustration, animation, sound effects, music, and social impact. By developing a computer game from start to finish, one would be able to acquire multi-disciplinary knowledge to become an IT professional for the modern era.

Diabetic Mario: designing and evaluating mobile games for diabetes education

Traditionally, diabetes education has relied on written materials, with limited resources available for children with diabetes. Mobile games can be effective and motivating tools for the promotion of children's health. In our earlier work, we proposed a novel approach for designing computer games aimed at educating children with diabetes. In this article, we apply our game design to a mobile Android game (Mario Brothers). We also introduce four heuristics that are specifically designed for evaluating the mobile game, by adapting traditional usability heuristics. Results of a pilot study (n = 12) to evaluate gameplay over 1-week showed that the children found the game engaging and improved their knowledge of healthy diet and lifestyle.

Playing with other(ed) species: games, representation, and nonhuman animals

During the writing of this essay, the controversial nonhuman animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sent out a tweet linking to an online article about the recent PC and Playstation 4 console game No Man’s Sky, in which players are positioned as explorers of countless virtual planets. Encountering the wide array of creatures indigenous to these worlds, players of this game are offered the choice of whether ‘to document them and name them or slaughter them en masse’ (Francisco, ‘PETA’). While an environmental agenda appears to be far from the game designers’ minds, PETA’s Marketing Vice President Joel Bartlett interprets No Man’s Sky as ‘counting on our natural empathy … we have a natural sense of exploration that has been important to human history’ (Francisco, ‘PETA’). Indeed, PETA has immersed itself in the gaming industry by creating its own simple online games in-house, such as the provocative Mario Kills Tanooki, which opposes what it sees as the unethical messages conveyed by Nintendo’s popular Super Mario Bros. franchise. These instances of the intersection of exploration, ethics, empathy, and play raise important questions regarding the potential role(s) of gaming in furthering (or hindering) the welfare of nonhuman animals. This issue becomes more and more urgent not only in a time of ongoing climate change, environmental degradation, and the continued endangerment of countless species around the planet, but also in a time when the gaming industry and the adoption of game design principles in many others grows apace.

Learning = playing: Interactive learning with game-based design principles

This paper explores the rapid escalation of demand for information in both complex and convergent forms of accessible technology. The authors contend that this growth creates a concomitant demand for a highly skilled information technology workforce. To ensure the preservation and continued development of this workforce, education of the information technology professional is increasingly acknowledged as one of the primary challenges
confronting educators and educational institutions. Many institutions have sought solutions to this educational conundrum in populist concepts of e-learning

Architect as composer: engaging architecture students with music in the design studio

This paper explores the engagement of architectural students with music in a second year design studio, through a Game and two design projects. A ‘Game’, in the context of this research, is a low-risk learning activity derived from the model established in the CUTSD ‘Reflective Making’ project. The Game required students to complete one of three tasks; to compose and record a piece of electronic music; to research the works of a composer within a digital presentation or to design a prototype musical instrument. This was used as a generative device to inform the design of a Music Room: a space for the contemplation and composition of music. A third stage of the project involved the actual construction of 8 Music Rooms, a high-risk, high-reward activity that requires physical resolution of an established relationship between music and architecture.

This paper will focus on the engagement of architecture students with the Game and related design projects. Student perceptions of the project are used to inform an evaluation of the project as an authentic learning experience and as a valuable component of their architectural education.

The realm of the game geek : supporting creativity in an online community

This paper explores the importance of online communities designed to support the creativity of tertiary students enrolled in Computer Science studies. Online discussion forums provide university students with a supportive and nurturing environment and a community where they can share knowledge and ideas. The authors draw on findings derived from a study of first year Computer Science students enrolled in a Games Design and Development unit. Of particular interest is the ways in which the participants develop and control the environment in order to enhance their own creative expression.

An architecture of rewards: a new poetics to exhibition design?

This paper argues that the influence of multimedia on exhibition practices can be felt not only by the presence of multimedia interactives in the exhibition itself but more generally by the presence of similar structural principles. The argument is conducted by borrowing from Stephen Johnson’s (2005) thesis that contemporary forms of popular culture, particularly those found in video games, television and film, are based on an ‘architecture of rewards’. In taking this term across to exhibition practices, I use it to analyse an approach to the interpretation of a heritage site, which attempts neither to reconstruct its former uses nor to insert traditional forms of ‘contextual’ displays. Instead, I argue that the curatorial attempt to find ways in which the site could become the principal object of display resulted in the conscious production of narrative gaps which become the structural armature for the encouragement of game playing in a similar process to that discussed by Johnson in relation to video games.