Educational Burst Games - A New Approach for Improving Learner Proficiency

Abstract

Learner proficiency in educational games has been a well-researched area for the past decade. The majority of methods use a quasi-mixed method approach that includes some form of assessment of learning prior to, during, and after the game has been played. During gameplay, game-based assessment (GBA) can be used to assess the learning imparted by the game to the students. A common strategy for GBA has been to utilize surveys and built-in quizzes to measure student learning during gameplay. However, this impacts students’ attention negatively as they need to change their attention from gameplay to the assessment and back. Educational burst games (EBR) are fast repetitive action-oriented games that build player proficiency through repetitive gaming. In this paper, we present the design of a math game that follows EBR principles and evaluate the learning gains via a small sample of students. Our findings indicate that EBR works well in certain educational contexts and can be further expanded to work well with real-time GBA techniques.