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This chapter examines two tools that may be helpful in coordinating the research and development of educational video games: assessment theories and game jams. It begins with a brief overview of the different approaches to video games and learning, with particular emphasis on behavior, biology, and social interactions. It then considers how integration of different learning theories and game design can be used to better create games that appeal to both designers and researchers. It also describes an assessment framework known as evidence-centered design and concludes by discussing the applications of assessment theories and game jams to education.

This book investigates the efficacy of video games for promoting content learning and skill acquisition in the classroom setting. It examines a wide range of theoretical perspectives that have important implications for understanding how children and adolescents acquire content knowledge and cognitive skills. It brings together the different views of practitioners and researchers about the game design process and the specific features that make an educational game effective. It also presents findings from research programs that assessed the impact of recreational and educational games on the skills and content knowledge of children and adolescents, as well as the extent to which cognitive skills obtained through video game play transfer beyond the game setting. Finally, the book challenges readers to consider how best to use educational games and educational technology to improve learning among all students.

This chapter examines media effects, communication, and complexity science insights on games for learning. More specifically, it considers how a communication perspective can contribute to research on games for learning. It first provides an overview of traditions of media effects research before turning to a discussion of communication research on media use and media messages. In particular, it explores the concept of “uses and gratifications,” user control, and the dynamic effects of formal features. It also describes dynamical systems and how science can inform the design of educational games.

This chapter examines motivational aspects that cause students to play educational games and learn their featured content, with particular emphasis on a card game called Tug-of-War. It begins with an overview of help-seeking in technical environments before turning to a discussion of an initial way to measure motivation to learn: by focusing on the type and amount of help students seek from others in the classroom while playing the game. It then describes the design and development of Tug-of-War and how it has improved learning outcomes with respect to traditional academic measures.

This chapter focuses on formative research and how it can be used to inform the design of educational games. It first provides an overview of what formative research is and what the formative process looks like before turning to a discussion of the project at the Center for Children and Technology in which formative research was used to guide game design and development. In particular, it describes two formative activities designed to improve students' reading comprehension with the aid of pictures of different speakers and communities of usage as well as images containing words with multiple meanings.

This chapter examines the effects of action video game experience on children's vision, attention, and cognitive skills. It first provides an overview of action video games before turning to a discussion of evidence on how such games affect the spatial and temporal characteristics/resolution of vision and attention, attentional capacity and how attentional resources are distributed, and the players' executive functions. It then considers the neural mechanisms that may underlie the enhanced attentional skills observed in action video game players. It also explores the effects of action video game experience on exogenous attention, along with the view that relates the perceptual and cognitive effects of action video game experience to an increase in the rate at which perceptual information is integrated. The chapter concludes by outlining the lessons from action video games for educational games as tools of learning in the classroom setting.