Archive for June, 2006

This Serious Games Source feature article Ahead of the Game? Games in Education by Alan Carpenter and Helen Windsor of 3T Productions focuses on the use of their Sonica Spanish game in UK schools. They conclude, “Although the use of games for educational purposes is still in its infancy, evidence from the classroom has revealed that gaming technology demonstrates not only clear benefits in engagement, attitude and learning intensity, but it also encourages collaboration, healthy competition and detailed learning discussions. What is more encouraging is that use of gaming is helping to transform children’s classrooms into vibrant, energetic and crucially learning focused places to be, actually helping children want to learn.” Full article available here.

One reason games can be powerful learning tools is their ability to assess, adapt and level to student’s needs in real time. According to Jason Dobson’s article on Pragmatic Solutions in Serious Games Source, “America’s Army… one of, if not the most successful serious game yet released (is effective because by) “…collecting data on a user’s gameplay, we are able to not only deliver customized content (and) in-game assets based on that gameplay, but we can also make more sophisticated inferences or predictive modeling of how that user might play certain scenarios, and thus enhance the gaming experience.”

Pragmatic now offers a glimpse behind the gameplay on America’s Army live reporting site. Although this public dashboard doesn’t drill down to individual users there’s no reason why it couldn’t, so not only would game play be differentiated on the fly, teachers facing a classroom of students would have a real-time picture of where each student is in his/her mastery and allowing them to adjust their presentation to serve different learner’s abilities.