Changing the way we build games: a design-based research study examining the implementation of homemade powerpoint games in the classroom

This design-based research study examined the effects of a game design project on student test performance, with refinements made to the implementation after each of the three iterations of the study. The changes to the implementation over the three iterations were based on the literature for the three justifications for the use of homemade PowerPoint games in the classroom: constructionism, microthemes, and question writing. A review of the literature for the justifications found that the game project, as implemented in previous studies using homemade PowerPoint games, did not align well with the justifications. After three iterations of the study, students who created homemade PowerPoint games did perform better on assessments than students who either did not create games, created games as a review, or created games as part of an unstructured unit project. However, these differences were not statistically significant. As part of the third iteration, two of the individual justifications were tested in isolation to whether gains could be seen without creating games. While the students who were part of interventions involving microthemes and question writing did perform better than students who did not receive the interventions, the differences were not statistically significant. Future research in the area of game design as an instructional tool should look to replicate these studies, as some of the sample sizes were small. Future research should also examine additional changes to the implementation of a game design project, including the use of other programming languages

Game Design as Authentic Science: Creating Low-Tech Games that Do Science

Many students love everything about video games, so teaching them to use technology to design their own games around content is an assignment that can offer built-in engagement. The problem, however, is that teachers often don’t have the time or expertise to teach computer programming, let alone content and process skills. On top of that, installing game design software can create friction between the teaching staff and technology department. That’s where Microsoft PowerPoint comes in. Did you know you can help your students create—from scratch or from a template—a video game using PowerPoint

Game Design and Homemade Powerpoint Games: An Examination of the Justifications and a Review of the Research

Research on educational games often focuses on the benefits that playing games has on student achievement. however, there is a growing body of research examining the benefits of having students design games rather than play them. Problems with game design as an instructional tool include the additional instruction on the programming language itself as well as the potential costs associated with new software. One way to mitigate these problems is to use Microsoft PowerPoint as game design software. While not intended for this purpose, MS PowerPoint is ubiquitous in schools and requires little additional instruction before students can design games. In this literature review, we introduce homemade PowerPoint games, examine the three pedagogical justifications for their use (i.e., constructionism, narrative writing, and question writing), and review research studies involving homemade PowerPoint games. When we compared the recommendations from the literature for the justifications with how the homemade PowerPoint games were implemented, we found that the recommendations were not followed. Future research examining the use of homemade PowerPoint games should look to better align the implementation of a game design project with recommendations based on the research examining the individual justifications

Design Research Using Game Design as an Instructional Strategy

Game design as an instructional tool can be expensive and time-consuming, as new software requires not only capital outlay but also training for teachers and students. Therefore, researchers have looked at low-tech design platforms to accomplish the same educational goals. One such way is to use Microsoft PowerPoint as a game design tool. In the second iteration of a design study, we have changed the way a homemade PowerPoint game project is implemented in an environmental chemistry classroom by providing more structure and more opportunities for instruction and feedback on the elements of the game design. We compared the performance of between groups who created games and groups who did not on tests for two separate units. Both test results showed statistically significant differences: in favor of the control group on the first unit and in favor of the group creating games for the second unit. Further research needs to examine which factors led to the significant findings in both instances

Pictures from an Exhibition… of Online Learning: A Creative Representation of Qualitative Data

K-12 online learning at the K-12 level has been around for approximately two decades and is continuing to grow. While researchers have researched a variety of issues related to K-12 online learning, there has been little published on the student experience in web-based learning environments. In this article, two doctoral students were tasked with analyzing existing data, then representing and situating their findings in a format other than the traditional results and discussion sections found in a typical six-section journal manuscript. One student created an image that focused upon the tools used by the K-12 student in her online learning. The other student created a slideshow to illustrate the challenges faced by a second K-12 student in her online learning. While more research into the K-12 student experience in online learning is required, this article represents one creative attempt to address this need

Pictures from an Exhibition… of Online Learning: A Creative Representation of Qualitative Data

K-12 online learning at the K-12 level has been around for approximately two decades and is continuing to grow. While researchers have researched a variety of issues related to K-12 online learning, there has been little published on the student experience in web-based learning environments. In this article, two doctoral students were tasked with analyzing existing data, then representing and situating their findings in a format other than the traditional results and discussion sections found in a typical six-section journal manuscript. One student created an image that focused upon the tools used by the K-12 student in her online learning. The other student created a slideshow to illustrate the challenges faced by a second K-12 student in her online learning. While more research into the K-12 student experience in online learning is required, this article represents one creative attempt to address this need

Schism or Communion? A Discussion of the Morality of Online Learning through a Christian/Catholic Lens

While massive open online courses (MOOCs) garnered plenty of attention at the beginning of the decade, initial findings about their value have been disappointing. In particular, only a narrow range of participants appear to be successful in completing and passing these unmonitored courses: white, educated, affluent males. One prominent Catholic scholar, Jonathan Malesic, went as far as saying that the very nature of MOOCs does not align with Catholic teachings of learning through social interaction, adapting to the needs of the learner, and teaching (i.e., successfully) the masses. Further, by extension, he applied these criticisms to online learning in general. This article examines these criticisms, describes how these problems are present in K-12 online learning, and gives examples of how these issues are mitigated. The article concludes with ideas for using the online learning medium to promote Catholic and Christian values

Narratives from the Online Frontier: A K-12 Student’s Experience in an Online Learning Environment

Despite a large increase in the number of students enrolled in online courses, published research on student experiences in these environments is minimal. This article reports the narrative analysis of a series of interviews conducted with a female student at a brick-and-mortar school enrolled in a single virtual school course. Her narratives describe a student who often struggled with the content in her online course and was reluctant to interact with her online teacher. When she interacted with people online, it was using text, because she was shy and the hardware often did not work. Darlene’s experiences, likely typical of many K-12 online students, highlight a system in need of better strategies for the design and delivery of its educational opportunities

Are They Climbing the Pyramid? Rating Student-Generated Questions in a Game Design Project / Grimpent-ils la pyramide? Évaluation des questions produites par les étudiants dans un projet de conception de jeux

Researchers have examined the use of homemade PowerPoint games as an instructional technique to improve learning outcomes. However, test data have shown no significant difference in performance between high school chemistry students who created games and students who did not (Siko, Barbour, & Toker, 2011). One of the justifications for the use of the games is that students will, with practice, write higher-order questions when constructing the games. Two subject matter experts rated over 2,500 questions from games created by students in an environmental chemistry class through thematic analysis using Bloom’s taxonomy as a coding scheme. The students wrote primarily recall questions, and students who created games on two occasions did not write more questions than students who only created games once. This suggests that changes to the question-writing aspect of the game project may be necessary in order to see improvements in achievement when compared to control groups. Les chercheurs ont étudié l’usage de jeux PowerPoint maison en tant que technique pédagogique visant à améliorer les résultats d'apprentissage. Les données des tests n'ont toutefois révélé aucune différence significative quant au niveau de performance des étudiants du secondaire en chimie ayant créé des jeux et celui des étudiants n’en ayant pas conçus (Siko, Barbour, et Toker, 2011). L’utilisation des jeux est notamment justifiée par l’idée que, pratique aidant, les étudiants écrivent des questions plus complexes lorsqu’ils élaborent des jeux. Au moyen d’une analyse thématique utilisant la taxonomie de Bloom comme système de codification, deux experts chimistes ont évalué plus de 2500 questions provenant de jeux conçus par des étudiants d’une classe de chimie environnementale. Les étudiants ont rédigé principalement des questions faisant appel à la mémoire, et les étudiants ayant créé des jeux à deux reprises n’ont pas produit davantage de questions que ceux qui en étaient à leur première expérience de création de jeux. Il appert que des changements à la rédaction des questions sont requis au projet de jeux pour pouvoir améliorer la performance par rapport aux groupes témoins

The Sum Is Greater Than the Parts: Deconstructing Homemade PowerPoint Games

Homemade PowerPoint games are a low-tech alternative for using game design in classrooms. To date, much of the research examining the games has not shown an improvement in performance. This has led some to question whether the games are properly aligned with the instructional strategies researchers have used as justifications to support using them. This study examined how increasing the structure of the game design project affected student performance when compared to control groups, as well as those who created games in previous iterations of the study. In addition, we examined the effects of student performance when two of the instructional strategies (microtheme writing and question writing) were tested in isolation. Most of the comparisons showed no statistical difference in performance; however, results from the final iteration yielded significant gains when compared to the control group