To explore how the United States can harness the powerful features of digital games for learning, the Federation of American Scientists, the Entertainment Software Association, and the National Science Foundation convened a National Summit on Educational Games, on October 25, 2005 in Washington, DC. The Summit brought together nearly 100 experts to discuss ways to accelerate the development, commercialization, and deployment of new generation games for learning.
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Federation of American ScientistsHenry Kelly
One of the problems in science education is students' low motivation and difficulty to see the connection between science learning and their daily life. In addition, many science concepts are not intuitive, and involve complicated relations between parameters. We previously presented (Weizman & Broza, 2012) evaluation of a model integrating digital educational games with interactive learning units, where we found that students reported experiencing both learning and enjoyment. The current study focused on games in science, and examined the relation between the game design parameters and the
In this editor's note, Stephen Bitgood discusses the upcoming 1992 Visitor Studies Conference in St. Louis and summarizes the theme of the issue of "Visitor Behavior," which focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive exhibits.
The proposed conference will bring together leading national and international researchers and practitioners from developmental and cognitive psychology, game design, and media to examine how learning transfers from video game play to formal and informal learning. The conference will convene in New York City and serve to lay the foundation for an interdisciplinary New York-based community of researchers and practitioners interested in examining the implications of video game play on learning. Invited participants will address cognitive skills and content knowledge that children and adolescents acquire and refine during video game play; game features that captivate and promote skills development among game players; and evidence of skill and content knowledge transfer from video game play to informal and formal learning. Discussion of these issues will culminate in specification of the most appropriate research agenda to investigate the academic potential of video game play, particularly using those games that children and adolescent players find most compelling. An edited book will be published of the conference proceedings. The audience for this book will be academics, educators, game designers, media professionals, and policymakers interested in understanding the potential of video game learning for formal and informal instruction based on the most current research and practice.