Design Factors for Educational Video Games

Educational video games can provide an effective learning experience if designers ensure that the games engage the player and achieve learning goals. A fun game with few learning goals will fail to teach the player, while a boring game replete with learning goals will fail to retain the player’s attention. By providing a deeper understanding of the design factors that affect these two outcomes, educational game developers can produce games that better educate the player. This study uses design research to examine design features used in creating educational games for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). 25 design features were found to be significant in the design of educational games. The goal of this research study is to discover the effect that each of these features has on engagement and learning, as well as the correlation that these features have on each other. What makes this study unique and instrumental in discovering the general effects of these design features is the large amount of data collected to validate the results. To study the effects of 25 design features, 25 experiments were run, each of which tested a subset of the design features. Each experiment involved the creation of an educational STEM game, followed by a second version of that game, enhanced with the set of design features. The experiments then measured differences in engagement and learning outcomes between the two versions of the game and then isolated the effects of individual features by performing a correlation analysis on the overall result. The design features with the biggest impact on engagement were the expression of learning goals and immersion in these STEM games. To a lesser extent, user interface, visual cues and level behaviour also enhanced engagement in the player. These generally align with the characteristics of optimal flow, where immersion, action and agency contribute to the optimal player experience. From a learning point of view, subject integration was the most significant design feature, with other features such as increasing challenge, visual instructions and aesthetic elements contributing lesser effects on the player’s learning performance.Ph.D