Educators at all levels have begun to exploit children's attraction to games. However, until recently, especially at the K12 level, it has been assumed that learners were consumers of games and not their producers. The goal of the Pedagogical Game project is to develop and evaluate a secondary school curriculum for learning standards-based content via collaborative game-making. The proposed work will test the hypothesis that creating computer games (game-making) can engage students in learning standards-based content and significantly impact achievement and retention and that collaborative game design can be a powerful tool for encouraging open negotiation and argumentation, a core element in promoting creativity. The interdisciplinary and project-based approach to learning will encourage art/theater and math/science students to work together in a collaborative setting and promote differentiation of learning tasks and student-centered learning. Research being undertaken includes (a) developing collaborative game making curriculum where standard based math content is effectively integrated; (b) identifying scaffolding opportunities, such as promoting student collaboration and reflection through online discussions and wiki-based journaling; (c) developing instructional assessment tools based on discourse analysis and course topic ontology that will monitor student progress over time according to the game making project goals.
The proposed work will strengthen and evaluate a fledgling game-building curriculum that was created to address the educational needs of at-risk high school students in underperforming schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The program has a large potential to positively impact the education and lives of our at-risk student population. The intellectual merit of the project includes a game-making curriculum with embedded standards and new ways to promote and evaluate collaboration in a game-making context. The results of the project will have broad societal impact by enhancing the ability of students from traditionally under-represented groups to participate in STEM fields of study while learning 21st century career skills. The project will also contribute to the knowledge base through careful empirical evaluation of the benefits of creative new instructional strategies (game-making, project-based learning) that support learning styles and strategies preferred by students who have had difficulty excelling in mathematics learning. With the support of LAUD teachers and staff, we are poised to develop and integrate the program into the curriculum and scale its adoption. Its success has the potential to transform learning strategies for at risk students.
