面向实用的电子教育游戏界定及特征研究

本文在对已有电子教育游戏相关概念梳理的基础上,提出电子教育游戏从本质上讲是由游戏设计和制作人员创作、承载着具体教育和娱乐目的的计算机软件。并从游戏者角度作出进一步阐释,指出游戏者的游戏活动是游戏者在游戏环境中,依据游戏规则、使用游戏策略、为最终达成游戏目标而进行的一系列活动。在此过程中游戏者既可获得与日常生活不同的紧张、喜悦等感情,又可完善或者提高自身性能的某些方面。在对电子教育游戏概念研究的基础上,进一步提出了电子教育游戏的五个主要属性：目标性、规则性、策略性、自由性和娱教性。     

Designing Educational Video Games to Be Objects-to-Think-With

In this article we propose that educational game design should work to create games as objects-to-think-with—games that engage players in the exploration of and experimentation with personally interesting questions around domain-relevant representations. We argue that this design focuses on developing tools and interactions that the player can use for inquiry and productive thinking. As a step toward achieving this goal, we propose the constructible authentic representations design principle and illustrate this principle using a prototype game, Particles!, for exploring the particulate nature of matter. Observations of game play and interviews with 9 children ages 11–14 suggest that core game representations and mechanics provided players with a space for engaging in useful scientific practices and knowledge resources for reasoning about the important role molecular structure plays in material properties beyond the game. We explore how this design proposal extends and complements existing constructivist game design frameworks. Furthermore, we suggest that the framework of games as objects-to-think-with should push the educational game design community to consider the complexity and nuance of cognition and to embrace and champion the learner in game design.     

Citizen science in digital worlds: the seduction of a temporary escape or a lifelong pursuit?

There is a vast terrain of emerging research that explores recent innovations in digital games, particularly as they relate to questions of teaching and learning science. One such game, Citizen Science, was developed to teach players about the practice of citizen science as well as lake ecology. Citizen science is a pedagogy that has a long history within the scientific community, engaging the public in ongoing community and environmental surveys to collect data for existing small-scale studies. More recently, citizen science has gained traction as an educational context for teaching and learning science in ways that connect to students?? lives and interests. By placing citizen science within the realm of digital worlds, Matthew Gaydos and Kurt Squire invite new possibilities for knowledge to become more kinetic, moving in multiple directions. In this article we discuss some of the tensions we experienced as we explored the digital game, Citizen Science. We highlight questions about narrative and complexity, emergent game play and transfer to encourage thinking about the development and implementation of games such as Citizen Science.     

Effectiveness of Parent–Child Number Board Game Playing in Promoting Chinese Kindergarteners’ Numeracy Skills and Mathematics Interest

Research Findings: In Study 1, we observed 32 Chinese kindergarteners playing a number board game with their caregivers in dyads. Number board game playing provided important opportunities for kindergarteners and their caregivers to talk about an array of number concepts, but their numeracy-related exchanges rarely went beyond counting. In Study 2, 88 Chinese kindergarteners and their parents were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups, namely, the game with parent training group, the game without parent training group, the exercise book group, and the control group. After a 4-week intervention, kindergarteners in the 3 treatment groups who began as relatively unskilled in numeracy showed comparable improvement in 3 numeracy tasks, and the effect sizes were often larger in the game with parent training group than in the game without parent training group. Moreover, kindergarteners in the 2 game groups tended to show relatively heightened mathematics interest. Practice or Policy: Findings of these 2 studies suggest that number board game playing has the potential benefit of promoting kindergarteners’ numeracy competence and mathematics interest. Training of parents might even optimize kindergarten children’s gains from parent–child number board game playing.     

The role of practice in chess: A longitudinal study

We investigated the role of practice in the acquisition of chess expertise by submitting a questionnaire to 104 players of different skill levels. Players had to report their chess rating, the number of hours of individual and group practice, their use of different learning resources and activities, and whether they had been trained by a coach. The use of archival data enabled us to track the rating of some of the players throughout their career. We found that there was a strong correlation between chess skill and number of hours of practice. Moreover, group practice was a better predictor of high-level performance than individual practice. We also found that masters had a higher chess rating than expert players after only three years of serious dedication to chess, although there were no differences in the number of hours of practice. The difference that may explain the variation in rating is that masters start practising at an earlier age than experts. Finally, we found that activities such as reading books and using computer software (game databases, but not playing programs) were important for the development of high-level performance. Together with previous data and theories of expert performance, our results indicate limits in the deliberate practice framework and make suggestions on how best to carry out learning in chess and in other fields.     

"Cola-Game": An Innovative Approach to Teaching Inventory Management in a Supply Chain

In this article we present a game that can be used as a tool to educate students and managers on the issues in supply chain (SC), inventory management. The game has a bilevel demand with one level during regular times and another during sale times. The game could be played in two modes (independence and cooperation) and has been field tested in engineering and business classes. Players developed an appreciation for fluctuating demand and its impact on the costs and performance of a SC. They also learned the benefits and a monetary evaluation approach for cooperation. Our statistical analysis revealed that, as the game progressed, the performance of the teams improved. We present an integer linear programming (ILP) model to evaluate the performance of the teams. Because it is a post facto analysis, while the game is played without knowing the materialized retailer demand for the period, the ILP solution is not a tight lower bound on the total cost of the SC. However, it could be used to compare performance across teams. As an alternative, we also present a possible distribution of total SC costs that could be used as another reference without actually solving an ILP.     

Understanding problem solving behavior of 6–8 graders in a debugging game

Debugging is an over-looked component in K-12 computational thinking education. Few K-12 programming environments are designed to teach debugging, and most debugging research were conducted on college-aged students. In this paper, we presented debugging exercises to 6th–8th grade students and analyzed their problem solving behaviors in a programming game – BOTS. Apart from the perspective of prior literature, we identified student behaviors in relation to problem solving stages, and correlated these behaviors with student prior programming experience and performance. We found that in our programming game, debugging required deeper understanding than writing new codes. We also found that problem solving behaviors were significantly correlated with students’ self-explanation quality, number of code edits, and prior programming experience. This study increased our understanding of younger students’ problem solving behavior, and provided actionable suggestions to the future design of debugging exercises in BOTS and similar environments.     

Simulating Oppression: Digital Gaming,Race and the Education of African American Children

Educational game designers and educators are using digital games as a platform for teaching academic content, including multicultural curriculum. However, it is unclear how well digital game-based learning can coexist with the goals of multicultural education for the purpose of meeting the needs of African American children. In this essay, we raise serious questions about the use of digital games to teach about social oppression in ways that privilege the psychological well-being of African American children. We argue that digital games that intend to recreate histories of racial oppression can be harmful to African American children if they reproduce popular and problematic notions of indigenous lives and experiences. We illuminate some of the dangers of such digital games through a preliminary exploration of one digital game designed to teach about facets of African American enslavement. Our essay concludes with recommendations for culturally relevant digital game-based learning design and instruction.     

On Location Learning: Authentic Applied Science with Networked Augmented Realities

The learning of science can be made more like the practice of science through authentic simulated experiences. We have created a networked handheld Augmented Reality environment that combines the authentic role-playing of Augmented Realities and the underlying models of Participatory Simulations. This game, known as Outbreak @ The Institute, is played across a university campus where players take on the roles of doctors, medical technicians, and public health experts to contain a disease outbreak. Players can interact with virtual characters and employ virtual diagnostic tests and medicines. They are challenged to identify the source and prevent the spread of an infectious disease that can spread among real and/or virtual characters according to an underlying model. In this paper, we report on data from three high school classes who played the game. We investigate students’ perception of the authenticity of the game in terms of their personal embodiment in the game, their experience playing different roles, and their understanding of the dynamic model underlying the game.     

正态分布环境下的医药博弈算法

某些季节性疾病的发病人数在一年当中呈正态分布特征,而治疗这种病的专用药品有效期较短,倘若盲目地大批量采购这种药品,必然会造成很大的浪费,如何合理地采购药品来应对这种疾病的到来呢?本文从博弈学观点出发,构造医药与病人的博弈函数关系[1]来解决这个矛盾;从而也说明了概率统计在医药卫生系统中应用方面的重要性.     

非合作博弈模型的模糊构建与应用

利用模糊集理论,将局中人决策的不确定性引入传统的博弈论结构中,构建了一个静态非合作博弈模型。通过对企业市场竞争问题的讨论,验证了模型在解决模糊多决策问题中的可行性及有效性。     

Learning to Count: Structured Practice With Spatial Cues Supports the Development of Counting Sequence Knowledge in 3-Year-Old English-Speaking Children

Research Findings: Children who speak English are slower to learn the counting sequence between 11 and 20 compared to children who speak Asian languages. In the present research, we examined whether providing children with spatially relevant information during counting would facilitate their acquisition of the counting sequence. Three-year-olds (n = 54) who played a 1–20 number board game in which numbers were grouped by decade into 2 rows learned significantly more of the counting sequence than children who played a linear version of the game or those who were in the control group. Both the row and linear versions of the game helped children improve their performance on an object counting task. Children’s performance on a number line task did not show an effect of either game intervention. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that counting practice that includes spatially informative cues can facilitate young English-speaking children’s learning of the challenging number sequence from 11 to 20.     

The use of computer games as an educational tool: identification of appropriate game types and game elements

Playing games is an important part of our social and mental development. This research was initiated to identify the game type most suitable to our teaching environment and to identify game elements that students found interesting or useful within the different game types. A group of twenty students played four commercial games (SimIsle, Red Alert, Zork Nemesis and Duke Nukem 3D). Results suggest that students prefer 3D-adventure (Zork Nemesis) and strategy (Red Alert) games to the other types ("shoot-em-up", simulation) with Zork Nemesis ranked as the best. Students rated game elements such as logic, memory, visualisation and problem solving as the most important game elements. Such elements are integral to adventure games and are also required during the learning process. We present a model that links pedagogical issues with game elements. The game space contains a number of components, each encapsulates specific abstract or concrete interfaces. Understanding the relationship between educational needs and game elements will allow us to develop educational games that include visualisation and problem solving skills. Such tools could provide sufficient stimulation to engage learners in knowledge discovery, while at the same time developing new skills.     

对教育游戏设计的初探

游戏在全世界范围内越来越流行,很多专家学者提出把游戏和教育相结合,来设计教育游戏。本文从教育游戏的角度出发,对教育游戏的设计进行了理论的探讨。经过大量的研究分析后,提出了游戏和教育融合的观点,以及设计教育游戏的五项构思,希望可以对教育游戏的开发起到抛砖引玉的作用。     

Educational theories and computer game design: lessons from an experiment in elementary mathematics education

Although educational games have been used for a considerable time, their true potential for enhancing achievement and motivation is still being explored. We argue in this paper that we may get closer to realizing this potential if the theoretical underpinning of educational games is improved. We developed a simple interactive math game based on insights from cognitive load and game design theory, in which players solve mathematical problems competitively and creatively. To investigate the effects of the game on achievement and motivation, we ran an experiment with fifth- and sixth-grade students. Our results show that students who played the game achieved better math results than those who did not. We did not find any significant differences in math motivation. Another promising finding, albeit beyond the scope of our hypotheses, relates to the potential effects of math games on student behavior.

     

Examining the requirements for an intergenerational learning game

Intergenerational learning (IGL) has been identified as a viable way to help organizations deal with the problems an ageing worker population brings with it. Information and communications technology (ICT) in its many forms can be utilized to support IGL. This paper investigates the requirements for a game that would help raise stakeholder awareness for IGL, and allow individuals to practice skills related to it. By interviewing members of the European Union (EU)-funded SILVER-project we aim to find out suitable contexts, interventions and mechanisms that allow us to design such a game. Based on the interviews we found out that the game should be easily contextualized so that it works in—or is easily adapted to—different countries and cultures. For example sports or nature could be such contexts. As for mechanisms and interventions we found out that there are many possibilities. We conclude that such a logical combination of mechanisms and interventions that support the selected context must be chosen.     

本体性游戏与手段性游戏探析

幼儿自发开展的、以游戏本身为目的、无游戏之外的目的的游戏,称之为本体性游戏;由教师组织的教学游戏,其活动的本体是教育活动,称之为手段性游戏。语言、社会、科学、艺术等领域的教育可以采用手段性游戏的方式。健康领域的教育尽可能地采用本体性游戏。     

The Counties of England: a nineteenth-century geographical game to amuse and instruct

This study examines a Victorian geographical card game entitled The Counties of England published by Jaques & Son. Advertised as highly instructive and educational, it was designed to teach children about the principal towns in each county, their products and notable buildings. The aims of the study were to discover whether the information printed on the cards accurately reflected the towns’ main features and if the number of cards allocated to each county was representative of its population size. The study found that many towns included in the first edition of the game were accurately represented, but later issues, despite some modification, carried somewhat outdated information. Counties with large populations were also generally allotted more cards. Several factors were identified as possibly influencing which towns were selected and how they were presented, including tourist appeal, the card designer’s interests and knowledge and the rules and conventions of the game.     

About cooperative engineering: theory and emblematic examples

In this article we focus on ‘cooperative engineering’, in which teachers and researchers co-design didactic sequences. In the first part of the article, we present cooperative engineering by describing some of the main principles on which it is grounded. The second part is dedicated to a case study, which enables us to illustrate some elements of the collective work in a specific cooperative design in kindergarten. The designed learning game, the ‘Treasure Game’, aimed to assist kindergarten students to build a system of graphical representations, which was implemented in a series of phases in which students were asked to memorise a series of items with increasing levels of difficulty. The game demonstrated the students’ growing competence in recalling items using strategies such as making lists and working collaboratively to collectively recall items through a ‘treasure box’. In the third part of the article, we show how this case study embodies some of the main principles put forward in the first part.