Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 50, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 559-578
Computers & Education

Computer game design: Opportunities for successful learning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.09.020Get rights and content

Abstract

Developing children as successful learners is a key aim of A Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland. This paper presents qualitative results from an eight week exploratory field study in which a class of ten year olds made their own computer games. The analysis focuses on the development of aspects of successful learning as identified in the curriculum: enthusiasm and motivation for learning, determination to reach high standards of achievement, independent and group learning, and linking and applying learning in new situations. As teachers have an important role in facilitating and supporting learners as they use technology, the paper concludes with a discussion of implications for classroom practice.

Introduction

The potential for learning with computer games has been described as “striking” (O’Neil, Wainess, and Baker, 2005). In this paper we offer evidence of successful learning – as set out in A Curriculum for Excellence (Scottish Executive., 2004) – resulting from the use of the Neverwinter Nights game authoring tool with nine and ten year old pupils.

The curriculum in Scotland is undergoing substantial revision with a view to implementing it in schools by 2009 (Scottish Executive, 2004). The new curriculum (A Curriculum for Excellence) establishes a set of principles for learners from the ages of 3–18, based around developing pupils’ capacities as: confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective contributors and successful learners. These categories are related to the redevelopment of the curriculum in England and Wales, with its very similar aims of enabling young people to become: “successful learners, who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve; confident individuals, who are able to lead safe, healthy and fulfilling lives; responsible citizens, who make a positive contribution to society” (QCA., 2006).

In this paper, we focus on the successful learner strand of A Curriculum for Excellence. An aspiration of the curriculum designers was to develop “successful learners with enthusiasm and motivation for learning, determination to reach high levels of achievement and openness to new thinking and ideas” (Scottish Executive, 2004). Some component skills of successful learning are considered to be the ability to learn independently or in groups, and to link and apply learning between contexts.

The work described here is part of the Adventure Author project, which is investigating the creative process of game design in an educational setting. We are currently developing theoretically motivated software scaffolding to support learners through the stages of the creative process. The scaffolding will be embedded within an educational plug-in for the Neverwinter Nights 2 commercial game authoring tool, along with various other educational tools to support learners and their teachers in this task. We are in the process of designing this software using the CARSS learner centred design framework (Good & Robertson, 2006). The work reported here focuses on a classroom field study using the Neverwinter Nights software. The purposes of the study were to clarify which aspects of the software should be improved in the next version of our software, but more importantly to investigate the educational impact of using game making software in a classroom setting.

We begin by looking at related studies which consider the importance of powerful learning environments, issues relating to learning how to learn, and implications for the learner of both playing and making games. We then go on to introduce the Neverwinter Nights software and provide the context for our study. We present the findings of a thematic analysis of our data with respect to the successful learner strand of A Curriculum for Excellence, and consider the implications of these findings for classroom practice.

Section snippets

Related work

The Adventure Author project is informed by current research thinking about environments which promote effective learning and learner autonomy. In the following sections, we relate the features of the successful learner strand to previous research findings in order to better understand what underlying skills are required, and how these can be fostered within appropriate learning environments. We also place this game making project in the context of recent research on the potential of game based

The Neverwinter Nights software

There are various commercial and open source game authoring toolsets available, including the Unreal Editor, The Half Life 2 editor, Gamemaker, Mission Maker and Alice. We have chosen to work with Neverwinter Nights (NWN), a commercially available game which was first released in 2002. NWN is a Dungeons and Dragons style 3D role-playing game which comes with a free toolset for creating games using the game engine. This choice was made in 2003 when the research began for two main reasons: it was

A school based field study

We have adopted a design-based research approach during the Adventure Author project (Sandoval & Bell, 2004) as we are investigating an innovative use of technology in a classroom setting. In order to better understand the pedagogical implications of game making, we needed to gather initial data to develop a theoretical framework which could be further refined in future studies. We needed a flexible approach which would enable us to revise plans for the field study based on the reflections of

Implications for classroom practice

Given the evidence gathered during our exploratory work, it would appear that game making projects offer rich opportunities for the development of successful learning skills. However, these initial classroom sessions also highlighted some issues which are likely to become important if such an approach were to be adopted more widely.

The technology for game making should not be considered in isolation. We believe that the successes we have seen so far have emerged from the features of the

Conclusions

The Adventure Author project has shown that game making provides a range of opportunities for successful learning occur: the children in this study were motivated and enthusiastic; they showed determination to achieve and were able to learn collaboratively and alone; and they also showed evidence of being able to link and apply their learning to new situations. Game authoring using Neverwinter Nights offers a “powerful learning environment” (Smeets, 2005) in which children can engage in

Acknowledgements

The Adventure Author project is funded by EPSRC. We would like to thank the pupils and teachers who took part in the study.

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