New Approach to Science Content
Originally, our plans were to engage players in three science-activities (Experiment, Observation and Analysis) all related to food safety. We found that this was difficult because there was a certain amount of scientific knowledge required for each of these before they could just jump right in. For example, in the experiment design, we had to - at some point - teach them what independent and dependent variables were.
Our first solution was to introduce a scientist in the brig that the player could converse with. We drafted dialog and scripted out the interaction through which the scientist 'taught' the player how to design an experiment. The problems were 1) it was boring and 2) it was not an effective way to teach... it still wasn't very clear without having the sceintific knowledge put into context.
Our second solution was to use a "school house rock" approach... turning all the boring scientific instructional talk into fabulous musical numbers. This sounded great in concept... but still didn't solve the problems of putting the learned knowledge into context.
Our most recent approach is to simplify out scientific knowledge, and extract out the specific nuggets and skills the game player must have to do an experiment (we're ditching the other two for now), and teach *those* things. Then use School House Rock Songs to fill in the gaps, and have a culminating activity on designing and experiment.
Really the three phases are:
This sounds very boring... but we're really found some fun ways to do 1 and 2. More on that in future posts!
Our first solution was to introduce a scientist in the brig that the player could converse with. We drafted dialog and scripted out the interaction through which the scientist 'taught' the player how to design an experiment. The problems were 1) it was boring and 2) it was not an effective way to teach... it still wasn't very clear without having the sceintific knowledge put into context.
Our second solution was to use a "school house rock" approach... turning all the boring scientific instructional talk into fabulous musical numbers. This sounded great in concept... but still didn't solve the problems of putting the learned knowledge into context.
Our most recent approach is to simplify out scientific knowledge, and extract out the specific nuggets and skills the game player must have to do an experiment (we're ditching the other two for now), and teach *those* things. Then use School House Rock Songs to fill in the gaps, and have a culminating activity on designing and experiment.
Really the three phases are:
- Exposure: Introduce concepts without even naming them. (have games that have an independent and dependent variable, without really calling attention to it or providing lecture on it).
- Instruction and Reflection: Introduce more formal terms, with reflection on where and how they were used in context. (So... in the Monkey game, can you tell me which was the independent and which was the dependent variable?)
- Application: Once the basics are learned, games actually design and conduct an experiment.
This sounds very boring... but we're really found some fun ways to do 1 and 2. More on that in future posts!
posted by Barbara at 1:04 PM
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