Selene Game, Research Featured in Webcast
Wed Mar 21 2007
The development of a moon-focused videogame by the Center for Educational Technologies® is featured in an online interview with one of the game's designers and the lead researcher on the project.Dr. Debbie Denise Reese, senior educational researcher at the center, presented "Designing Selene: Theory-based Game Design and Data Mining" at the annual Serious Games Summit GDC held March 5-6 in San Francisco, where her interview took place. The NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future at the center has collaborated with Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology) and James Oliverio (University of Florida) to build a game that introduces youth to lunar science. In her case study, Reese, who is heading the research effort and contributing to the game design of Selene, described process and procedures for combining videogame design, cognitive science, and instructional design theories to produce compelling gameplay and measure learning through embedded data mining technologies.Her interview with the KidConfidence web site is available online. In it Reese talks about videogames as learning tools and how Selene will incorporate learning science into videogame design.Reese's session at the conference showed attendees how to:
- Design gameplay to prepare students for learning complex science concepts.
- Apply cognitive theory to game design and assessment.
- Operationalize "fun" as flow.
- Assess learning and flow by data mining critical gameplay incidents.
- Apply metaphor and analogical reasoning to serious game design.
