Arcadia: The Next Generation
In 2010, EdGE was funded to explore how to build infrastructure where teachers and learners could access students’ game-based learning (GBL) data to measure learning. We designed and tested several types of teacher dashboards and explored the limitations of GBL in the classroom.
FUN: Finnish-US Network
Jodi Asbell-Clarke
The Finnish-US Network (FUN) blended programs, games, research methods, and more from Finland and the USA to gain a broader picture of how engagement and learning are entwined in the growing field of game-based learning. The major research question asked, to what degree learners in the two cultures respond similarly or differently to STEM learning games. The FUN collaborators focused on several aspects of game-based learning including the relationship between learner perceptions of flow and game engagement.
Leveling Up
Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Teon Edwards, Jamie Larsen, Elizabeth Rowe
Through NSF-funded Leveling Up, EdGE designed a series of fun-to-play, publicly available mobile and browser-based games that support and measure standards-based high school science concepts. The play mechanics in the Leveling Up games are tightly tied to the related content, Newton’s first and second laws of motion, optics including light reflection and refraction, and bird flight.
Martian Boneyards
Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Teon Edwards, Jamie Larsen
EdGE launched its first game, Martian Boneyards, in 2010. Set in an HD virtual world called Blue Mars, Martian Boneyards engaged players in scientific inquiry as part of the mystery of an abandoned science center… surrounded by scattered bones.
May’s Journey
Elizabeth Rowe
Created with funding from NSF, May’s Journey is a 3D puzzle-based game which uses game design mechanics as metaphors to enhance learning of introductory programming concepts.
Revealing the Invisible
New technologies (including biometry and neuro-imaging) provide new opportunities to unobtrusively measure student engagement and learning in digital learning environments. Revealing the Invisible — developed through the NSF Ideas Lab on Data-Intensive Research to Improve Teaching and Learning October 2014—utilized these technologies to provide foundational knowledge of the ways in which measures of implicit learning might be linked to explicit learning to develop educationally relevant games that are adaptive to diverse learners.
STEMlandia
Jamie Larsen
STEMlandia tapped into the power of the Lab Cache Geocaching Adventure experience to reveal a world of nature and education. STEMLandia challenged geocachers to find 10 creatively hidden lab caches. Geocachers explored the Arboretum grounds using Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) skills to unlock the finds.