Children as Educational Computer Game Designers: An Exploratory Study

This study investigated how children designed computer games as artifacts that reflected their understanding of nutrition. Ten 5 th grade students were asked to design computer games with the software Game Maker for the purpose of teaching 1 st graders about nutrition. The results from the case study show that students were able to express their personal thoughts and intentions by designing and developing realistic computer games in a complex programming environment. Our findings point to gender implications and other contextual factors that motivated social interaction around game design and programming strategies.

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