I am not of the Oregon Trail age, in school in the Dark Ages before computers of any kind were common in schools and dot matrix printers a wonder on the horizon. So I am intrigued by games as education as they were not generally part of mine. Gaming has become a part of classroom instruction, whether a simple game to learn numbers and letters, or the use of Assassin’s Creed or Red Dead Redemption for older students. As I try to create one of my own, research into user needs leaves me intrigued by the possibilities.
My original plan was to target at least the younger end of the high school age group to a middle school age, group. Reading on educational games as they are used by different levels of education, though, I am narrowing the target ages to middle schoolers. Middle school educators, according to an Iowa State University study, prefer games that are challenging vice competitive.1
This supports the results of the interviews conducted earlier to develop personas, both of whom used educational games. Both of them wanted games that required the players to do research and understand a concept, instead of just jumping through rote memorization challenges. The game I’m developing will hopefully engage users with requiring a combination of skills and offering paths to do more reading of primary sources to understand issues.
- Lynn Meadows, “Research on Game-Based Learning Reveals Middle Schoolers are Motivated Differently” Faculty and Research News Iowa State University School of Education, College of Human Sciences at https://education.iastate.edu/research-on-game-based-learning-reveals-middle-schoolers-are-motivated-differently/ ↩︎
