The Elektra Project: Towards a New Learning Experience

Digital game-based learning is a hot topic of research and development. Since the advent of computer and video games, educators were inherently interested in utilizing the beneficial aspects of computer games for educational purposes. These factors are primarily the intrinsic motivation of games, immersive environments, engaging stories, and an artful balance between challenges and continuously growing abilities. Proponents of computer games delivered a large number of empirical investigations revealing that games may foster the development of abilities and competencies. Besides the advantageous aspects of computer games, a variety of problems were reported by researchers. Due to the high costs of professional game development, many educational games are technologically poor and cannot compete with entertainment games in terms of visual design, possibilities for interactions, or storytelling. Moreover, many current educational games do not incorporate a sound psychological, pedagogical, or didactic background; instead they are focusing on transmission or rehearsal of isolated facts or skills. Finally, such games lack the ability to adapt to individual competencies failing to balance challenge and abilities regarding knowledge or skills. The ELEKTRA project, introduced in this article, aims for addressing these problems relying on an interdisciplinary approach of cognitive science, neuroscience, pedagogy, game design, and game development. The project will develop an adventure game that can keep up with commercial games and that focuses on primarily curriculum-related educational purposes by incorporating a sound psychological and pedagogical framework. Moreover, the project will prove the outcomes of research and development by a comprehensive game demonstrator. (http://css.uni-graz.at/publicdocs/publications/USAB2006.pdf)