WORK IN PROGRESS: EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLICIT COURSE CONTENT EMBEDDED WITHIN COMMERCIAL VIDEO GAMES

As video games have become a mainstay in society, educators and software developers have taken the opportunity to create what are known as “serious games”. One definition of serious games is defined as a game that is used for purposes other than mere entertainment. As of today there has been much attention to research on the topic of serious games. The difference between serious games and commercial games is that in educational games and software, presentation is indiscreet; the learning material is front and center to the player experience, whereas in a commercial game, content the player learns may not always be explicitly presented. “The challenge of creating serious games is to adapt game features for instructional purposes without squeezing out what is enjoyable about games in the first place”. The content in serious gaming at times breaks the flow of the player’s interaction in order to teach the material and evaluate the player’s knowledge. This study proposes to place assessment activities within a game context in a fashion akin to the approach used in commercial game – what the player learns is implied rather than explicit. Learning will still be required in order to master the game. This learning can be substituted for an educational topic, which can be assessed throughout the game to test the player. The player can then be tested afterwards with traditional testing media to see if the information learned in the game has been retained. The primary goal of this study is to examine how effective a “commercial” game can be when it is discreetly filled with educational content. In this project, topics relating to introductory computer science will be used as the educational subject matter.