Franca Garzotto
ABSTRACT
Multiplayer games are becoming an important part of Internet use, and have been the subject of many theoretical and empirical studies. Still, relatively few researches investigate multiplayer Internet games that are designed for young children and for educational purposes. This paper focuses on the educational effectiveness of this class of systems, and introduces some heuristics for its evaluation. We also report an empirical study that involved eighty-five elementary school children and measured the educational effectiveness of an online multiplayer game. We used both learning benefits analysis and empirical assessment of our heuristics, comparing the findings of the two evaluation methods.
- Bloom, B. S., Mesia B. B., Krathwohl D. R Taxonomy of Educational Objectives New York. David McKay., 1964Google Scholar
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial, New York, 1991Google Scholar
- Deguchi A., et al. CarettaKids: A system for supporting childrens' face-to-face collaborative learning by integrating personal and shared spaces. In Proc. IDC'2006, Tampere, Finland, ACM Press, 2006 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Desurvire, H., Maplan, M., Toth, J. A. Using heuristics to evaluate the playability of games. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2004, April 2006, Vienna, ACM Press, 1509--1512 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Di Blas, N., Paolini P., Poggi, C. Educational benefits: testing and evaluation of a collaborative 3d world. In Proc. ED-MEDIA 2005, AACE, June 2005, 1002--1011.Google Scholar
- Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickel, E., Moore, R., "Alone Together" Exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games. In Proc. CHI2006 ACM Press, New York, 407--416 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Druin A. (eds). The Design of Children Technology. San Francisco (CA), 1999 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fisch, M. S., Making Educational Computer Games "Educational", In Proc. IDC'05, Boulder (Colorado), June 2005, ACM Press Google ScholarDigital Library
- Forfori M. Garzotto F., FaTe2: Storytelling Edutainment Experiences in 2D and 3D Collaborative Spaces, In Proc. IDC '06, Tampere (Finland) June 2006, ACM Press Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hanna L., Neapolitan D., Risden K., Evaluating Computer Game Concepts with Children. In Proc. IDC 2004, June 1--3 2004, College Park (Maryland), ACM Press, 49--56 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nardi, B., Harris, J. Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of WarCraft. In Proc. CSCW'06, November 2006, Banff (Canada), ACM Press, 1--10 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lave, J., & Wenger, E. Situated Learning: Legitimate Periperal Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
- Lazzaro, N., Keeker, K. What's my method? A game show on games. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2004, April 2006, Vienna, ACM Press, 1093--1094. Google ScholarDigital Library
- MacIntyre, B., Bolter, J. D., Gandy, M. Presence and the aura of meaningful places In Proc. Presence 2004, Valencia, Oct. 2004.Google Scholar
- Pagulayan, R., Keeker, K., Wixon, D., Romero, R., Fuller, T. 2003. User-centered design in games. In The HCI HandbookJ. A. Jacko and A. Sears (eds.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 883--905, 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Piper, A. M., O'Brien E., Morris M. R., Winograd, T., SIDES: A Cooperative Tabletop Computer Game for Social Skill Development. In Proc. CSCW'06, Nov. 4--8 2006, Banff (Canada), ACM Press 1--10 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Prensky. M. Digital Game-Based Learning. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Read, J. C. and S. J. MacFarlane. Using the Fun Toolkit and Other Survey Methods to Gather Opinions in Child Computer Interaction. In Proc. IDC'2006, Tampere, Finland, ACM Press, 2006 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Revelle G., Educating via Entertainment Media: the Sesame Workshop approach. In ACM Computer and Entertainment, 1, 1, 2003, 1--9 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rogoff, T. Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford University Press, Oxford (UK), 1990.Google Scholar
- Steiner B., Kaplan N., Moulthrop S. When play works: Turning game-playing into learning. In Proc. IDC'2006, Tampere, Finland, ACM Press, 2006 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sweetser, P. Wyeth P. Game Flow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games. ACM Computer and Entertainment, 3, 3. 2005, 1--23 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Vygotsky, L. S. Mind and Society: The development of higher psychological Process. M. Cole, V. John Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1978.Google Scholar
- Vorderer, P. Hartmann, T., Klimmt, C. Explaining the enjoyment of playing video games: The role of competition. In Proc. of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Games (Pittsburgh, PA), 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Werger E., Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning, and Identity, University Cambridge Press, Cambridge UK, 1999Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Investigating the educational effectiveness of multiplayer online games for children
Recommendations
Multiplayer online games as educational tools: Facing new challenges in learning
This paper outlines a proposal for the development of educational multiplayer online games based on the activity theory, as an alternative to the current trend in multiplayer gaming and a means of promoting collaboration among students. In order to ...
Multiplayer games as extension of misère games
AbstractWe introduce i-misère play to multiplayer impartial games, which is an extension of Li’s rank-based play and, at the same time, which contains the normal play and the misère play as special cases when the number of players is two. We characterize ...
Designing collaborative multiplayer serious games
The idea of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is being investigated for more than twenty years. Since a few years, game-based approaches like video games for learning (Serious Games) offer new fields of application. The combination of ...
Comments