This document discusses using games to teach hygiene and science concepts related to microbes. It describes research conducted with children to identify popular game genres and a resulting detective and platformer game designed around modeling learning outcomes related to microbes. The games showed some success in improving knowledge but further refinement is needed to better link game mechanics to learning objectives. The author advocates an approach of designing game mechanics to directly represent and teach target concepts.

1. Super Microbe World
Teaching Hygiene and Science Through Games
David Farrell
Gameologist
Glasgow Caledonian University
david.farrell@gcu.ac.uk
@unthank

2. Games in Education
• Games used as motivator (especially boys)
• extrinsic motivator
“finish your work and you can play”
• intrinsic motivator
• “since they like play, we’ll put learning
in their games!!”

4. Problem?
• These products are not particularly
successful as games or / education

5. Shavian Reversal
+ Text
=
Beauty Brains Beauty & Brains?

6. Shavian Reversal
+ =
Beauty Brains Beauty & Brains?

7. Shavian Reversal
Ugly & Stupid

8. Chocolate Covered Broccoli
• Thin layer of chocolate (game) on a piece
of broccoli (educational content)

9. Top Selling Educational Game on Amazon

13. Raph Koster
• Game Designer
• Ultima Online
• Everquest
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Playdom
• Author
• Theory of Fun for Game Design

16. Wil Wright
• Game Designer
• sims
• sim city
• spore

17. Will wright @ GDC2010
• Said that designing games is like building a
model of the universe. Playing a game is
like testing a world model and learning
from how it behaves.
• like a child playing with water or shapes.

19. • Neither Raph Koster or Wil Wright are
educational game developers - but they
have noticed the potential of games to
teach through modelling some aspect of
the world.

20. Kurt Squire
• Indeed, this kind of learning seems to be
something that games do particularly well
• Kurt Squire’s work with Civilization 3 - just
by playing scenarios in this commercial
game, students gained a deep, meaningful
understanding of history
• not as a series of facts - but as patterns,
relationships - as a model of how history
works

22. David W Shaffer
• Similar idea - game models physics.
(Svarovski & Shaffer, 2006)
• By playing with it, students get a really deep
understanding of physics.

24. • Instead of separating the game from the
learning, it seems that one of the best ways
to teach through play is to have the game
model the learning outcomes.
• By playing with a simulation, students can
attain a deep learning experience.

25. GM Choccoli
• If games teach what games model, then we
can design game mechanics that model
learning outcomes
• by doing that, we can create ‘genetically
modified broccoli’
• Broccolate? Choccoli?

26. • This puts an emphasis on the ‘game’ part of
educational game design.
• Educational game designers need to
understand the game development process.

28. e-Bug
• European Commission project to improve
microbial education
• Two audiences.
• 9-12 year olds
• 13-15 year olds
• Games to be suitable for play in class or at
home.

29. Audience Research
• Mix of desk and primary research
• Amazon for cartoon sales
• Focus groups with Scottish children for
further information
• Looking for kinds of games that they enjoy
that I could see being adapted for e-Bug

30. Genres (13-15yrs)
• Older children ALL liked shooters and
sports games (problem!)
• There wasn’t much consensus beyond that.
• I brought in some games for them to play
and give feedback. They were receptive to
story based games like Monkey Island and
Phoenix Wright.

32. Genres (9yrs)
• Surprisingly, the young pupils were less
opinionated on what they liked.
• Few owned a console. Most played
whatever games were on the popular Flash
portals (Kongregate etc)
• They liked arcadey, simple games and TV
quiz games like Millionaire.

33. Detective Game
• Narrative / conceptual model based.
• Heavily inspired by the Phoenix Wright: Ace
Attorney games
• Players explore locations, looking for clues,
and speak to characters.

36. Using Scenarios
• The idea was that each learning outcome
would be modelled through story.
• The characters in the game would describe
a mystery and a possible solution.
• The player would use evidence to disprove
these solutions and in the process would
learn the science.

37. For example...
• One learning outcome was:
• You should use a separate chopping
board for meat and vegetables.

41. Another Example
• LO: There are good microbes in the body
and we should look after them.

43. • Using dialogue, the player knows that the
Coach Beveridge character is sick.
• The player is talking to a girl called Allison
who tells the player that Coach Beveridge has
been taking her antibiotic pills.
• When the player confronts Coach Beveridge,
it emerges that he has killed his good bacteria
and that is why he is sick.

46. Younger Children
• For researching the younger audience, we
had decided that:
• we couldn’t use too much text.
• we wanted a visual and simple interaction
• I wanted an interaction that was very
immediate in its response

49. Converting LOs to
Mechanics
• Learning Outcome
• Some microbes are good for us.

50. Platform Game Solution
• Used different art to represent good and
bad microbes

51. • Contact with bad microbes hurts the player
whereas good microbes can be stood on to
jump higher.

52. • When good and bad microbes come in
contact with each other, they kill each
other - showing the good microbe
protecting the body.

53. Another Example
• LO: We use microbes to make foods like
bread and yogurt.

56. Some areas that worked
• Enjoyable - why?
• Platform game - good play-testing throughout
• levels tweaked to find appropriate difficulty
level.
• Didn’t ‘feel like’ an educational game
• Detective game - good stories / dialogue
• stories discussed with children before hand

57. • Teachers liked the games
• teacher involvement in conceptual stage
helped ensure their concerns were met
• rolled out to 10 EU countries, more coming

59. • Some positive knowledge change results
• in platform game, particular areas very
successful in short period of time (30
minutes of play covering multiple LOs)
• in detective game, some encouraging
results but not statistically significant -
too many pupils already aware of correct
answer - need further study

60. GM Choccoli Approach
• Mostly successful
• Hard to adapt because each LO has a hard
coded mechanic
• some of the LOs weren’t successfully
taught because the mechanic wasn’t evident
enough
• Can be difficult!

61. What Next?
• I’m working on games to teach secondary
school pupils about programming.
• My colleagues are working on a number of
other interesting project (music, science
etc)
• We are always looking for schools who
want to work with us!

62. For more Information
• www.e-bug.eu
• (teacher lessons + games)
• david.farrell@gcu.ac.uk
• @unthank