A framework to help analyze if creating a game to teach a learning objective is worth the work

Video games are a popular technology adopted by educators to help teach ideas. The benefits are due to pedagogically beneficial characteristics of such games including their ability to adapt to the learner, allow failure, and entertain and engage players. However, designing a video game is a significant effort that takes time and may not even teach the desired learning objective(s). In this work, we provide a framework that can be used by educators to help determine if the effort needed to create a video game is worth it for a given learning objective(s). Our framework blends four pedagogical ideas so that educators can consider if their game is worth the design effort; these pedagogical tools/theories include: (1) Bloom's taxonomy; (2) the Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (SAMR) Model; (3) Wiggins & McTighe course design approach and filter for learning objectives; (4) what we call, pedagogical logistics. With this framework, we analyze two games we have created, and we determine if the games we created were actually worth the effort. The overall goal is to create a framework and show how it can be used to help other researchers determine if their video game idea is worth creating.

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