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Diverse player experiences in the design of science games for bioinformatics learning

Published: 11 November 2013 Publication History

Abstract

While a growing number of serious games have been developed around science and engineering concepts, few are designed with an understanding of the socio-emotional aspects of gameplay. Positive affect has been shown to increase learning performance and retention. In this paper, we address enjoyment generated during the design of a bioinformatics computer game. We provide insights from a co-design process with high school students, and discuss the results of an initial user study in a biology classroom. We identify three areas of design focus for emotionally compelling science games that offer ways to integrate diverse player experiences: serendipitous experiences, emotion-laden ethics, and skill transfer. Our framework has design implications for creating science-based learning games, as well as more broadly in the design and implementation of other collaborative science learning environments.

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Cited By

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  • (2020)Advancing diversity in human centered data science education through gamesProceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/pra2.31457:1Online publication date: 22-Oct-2020
  • (2014)A Survey of Scholarly Literature Describing the Field of Bioinformatics Education and Bioinformatics Educational ResearchCBE—Life Sciences Education10.1187/cbe.13-10-019313:4(607-623)Online publication date: Dec-2014

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ChileCHI '13: Proceedings of the 2013 Chilean Conference on Human - Computer Interaction
    November 2013
    122 pages
    ISBN:9781450322003
    DOI:10.1145/2535597
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 11 November 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. bioinformatics
    2. design
    3. games
    4. science learning

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    ChileCHI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 14 of 41 submissions, 34%;
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    View all
    • (2020)Advancing diversity in human centered data science education through gamesProceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/pra2.31457:1Online publication date: 22-Oct-2020
    • (2014)A Survey of Scholarly Literature Describing the Field of Bioinformatics Education and Bioinformatics Educational ResearchCBE—Life Sciences Education10.1187/cbe.13-10-019313:4(607-623)Online publication date: Dec-2014

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