The "chocolate covered broccoli" is a reference to poorly designed educational games, where the game part is separate from the learning part. Effective educational video games directly tie the mechanics to the learning objectives - the exact opposite of what they did here. A great article about how to design effective educational games: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2022.2110684
Thanks Ashley! What educational video games stand out for you as being particularly effective? I'm curious about transferability of learning -- many games are really good in the moment but then the learning just...gets forgotten or not applied as intended. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the matter!
You're so right, transferring learning from the games to real results is rare. My favorite example of a well-designed educational game is DragonBox 12+ (here's a recent paper on it: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13304). The Re-Mission series of games has also been shown to be successful in cancer patients (recent paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2023.2289471).
Part of the problem is that you need a deep understanding of the knowledge and skills you're trying to teach and a game developer willing to do the extra work of mapping that to the mechanics. In DragonBox, you learn the relationships between different creatures the dragon can eat and these relationships map onto mathematical skills. Then, slowly, some of those creatures get replaced by symbols and eventually you are doing the exact same thing using all the same strategies, to solve algebra problems. You've been practicing the relevant skills all along, just with a less intimidating skin. As opposed to games that make you solve math problems in order to advance in the game, but the math problems themselves are just the same as doing a bunch of worksheets. You get practice that might help you memorize those particular problems, but you aren't practicing any skills and the game itself is just meant as a motivator to get you through those worksheets.
The "chocolate covered broccoli" is a reference to poorly designed educational games, where the game part is separate from the learning part. Effective educational video games directly tie the mechanics to the learning objectives - the exact opposite of what they did here. A great article about how to design effective educational games: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2022.2110684
Thanks Ashley! What educational video games stand out for you as being particularly effective? I'm curious about transferability of learning -- many games are really good in the moment but then the learning just...gets forgotten or not applied as intended. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the matter!
You're so right, transferring learning from the games to real results is rare. My favorite example of a well-designed educational game is DragonBox 12+ (here's a recent paper on it: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13304). The Re-Mission series of games has also been shown to be successful in cancer patients (recent paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2023.2289471).
Part of the problem is that you need a deep understanding of the knowledge and skills you're trying to teach and a game developer willing to do the extra work of mapping that to the mechanics. In DragonBox, you learn the relationships between different creatures the dragon can eat and these relationships map onto mathematical skills. Then, slowly, some of those creatures get replaced by symbols and eventually you are doing the exact same thing using all the same strategies, to solve algebra problems. You've been practicing the relevant skills all along, just with a less intimidating skin. As opposed to games that make you solve math problems in order to advance in the game, but the math problems themselves are just the same as doing a bunch of worksheets. You get practice that might help you memorize those particular problems, but you aren't practicing any skills and the game itself is just meant as a motivator to get you through those worksheets.
Thank you! I didn’t realize you JUST published an article on that!! Instant subscribe :D