SURGE: intended and unintended learning in digital games

Well-designed video games can support learners in building accurate intuitive understandings of the concepts and processes embedded in the games due to the situated and enacted nature of good game design (Gee, 2007). Most commercial games fall short as platforms for learning, however, because they do not help students articulate and connect their evolving intuitive understandings to more explicit formalized structures that would support transfer of knowledge to other contexts. In Thought and Language, Vygotsky (1986) discusses the potential for leveraging intuitive understandings from everyday experience ("spontaneous concepts") with instructed scientific concepts to build robust understandings. The SURGE project (Scaffolding Understanding by Redesigning Games for Education) focuses on integrating and overlaying popular gameplay dynamics with formal physics representations and visualizations (see Figure 1 (a) for a snapshot). The design combines cognitive processing-based design and socio-cognitive scripting with design principles and mechanics of popular commercial video games such as Mario Galaxy, Switchball, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Orbz, and Portal.