Importance of Research in Educational Games
I have always known that research is an important factor while developing educational games, but I didn’t realize the importance of it till recently. This semester my team is working on an educational math game for kids at the East Franklin School. At this school, as the kids are at different grade levels, 1st — 5th grade kids are all in the same classroom. When we started the project, we tried to develop a game that might satisfy all these grades of students. But after researching and playtesting with students, we learned that the math grade levels of these students is much lower than their current grade level. Even though there are thousands of math games in the app store, the challenge that we are facing is that we are developing a game that kids from grade 1st — 5th can play together.This is a wide age range, but as these kids are at different grade levels, our goal is to develop a game that can not only engage the kids, but also enable the older kids to teach younger kids in the classroom.
As this is the first time for the team to develop an educational game for a client, we are learning a lot about developing it with every passing day. One of the the most important things we learned recently is how lack of research can destroy a perfectly good game, if it is targeted to be educational. It is very important for an educational game to be credible. If it isn’t credible then parents and teachers will be hesitant to let the kids play it. We need enough research to back up an educational game and prove that it is effective. Now, for a semester long project, it is difficult to analyze if the game we developed worked or not, but the one thing we could do is make sure that we have relevant research to back it up. After all, education is not a new concept, so if the correct resources are implemented then it shouldn’t be that difficult to prove that it is a good educational game.
When I say research, what do I really mean? I believe that research comes in different forms. Some of the research sources that I could think of include interacting with teachers, playtesting with kids, meeting with research labs, playing existing games, and reading research papers. These are a lot of areas to focus on, and we didn’t realize till last week that each of these areas are equally important as they help different aspects of the game.
Within the first month of our game development process, the team only focused on research from interacting with one teacher, playtesting with 11 kids at the East Franklin School and playing some existing games. We soon learned that for our game to be appreciated as educational, we need to focus on a lot more areas of research. In the upcoming weeks, we are planning to have the game playtested by kids at about 2–3 schools, meet different teachers at these schools (instead of just one teacher at the school we are developing the game for), talk to the members of math research lab at Carnegie Mellon and read research papers. We have already set up meetings with getting the game playtested by some students at the Elizabeth Forward School District and we’ll continue playtesting there along with playtesting at East Franklin. We’ll be interacting with teachers at Elizabeth Forward as well during the playtesting sessions. This week, we are meeting the key members of Bob Siegler’s research group at Carnegie Mellon and next week we are planning to meet some Entertainment Technology Center alums who have worked on educational games. By putting all these research sources together, we are hoping to have the game at a good position by end of March.
As playtesting is an important part of research, let me give a brief overview of how a small part of playtesting has helped us with our game. One of the playtesting experiences that the team is proudest of is to involve the kids in the game development process. During our last playtesting session, we asked the kids to draw pictures of robots that we can use in the game. We then came up with some concept art based on those drawings and asked the teacher to have the kids pick some robot designs. She then sent those designs to us and we are currently working on implementing them in the game.
All this research will help to not only make the game straightforward and easy to play, but also improve the game mechanics. For example, because of lack of research, our game mechanics currently aren’t strong and some of the feedback we received included suggestions of doing more research in that area. We have already started looking into research papers on core math concepts and how they are taught, and we will be implementing it before our next presentation in March!
Good research can help a teacher with implementing the game as part of the lesson plans. As many schools follow the educational standards, teachers need proof that the game will help the students with achieving their educational goals before implementing it in the lesson plan. For our project, the teacher at East Franklin will be able to use the game as a part of the math lesson plan and our hope is that it will be implemented in the lesson plans at multiple schools. Having the game implemented in the lesson plans will be a huge accomplishment for the team and so we are trying our best to get all the relevant research into place before we publish the game to the app store!
