Educational Games Design: Creating an Effective and Engaging Learning Experience

The purpose of this thesis was to study the use of games as a medium to teach and to see how they can create a fun experience for the learners while being able to be effective as a learning tool. Despite there being many educational games, there are few that are considered to be successful. Slapping educational content into a game is not enough. Some design elements need to be considered and finding the correlation between gameplay and content is important. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part examines learning theories, concepts of fluid and crystallised intelligence, and issues of the traditional school system. The second part focuses on game design, looking at gamification and game-based learning, Flow Theory, elements of game design and User Interface design. Finally the paper looks into the Finnish education system and its reform. I received guidance on the thesis from Sanoma Pro and was also able to get an insight into their digital learning solutions, in particular their gamified platform Bingel. The results of the literature review were applied to Animal Kingdom, a game that teaches primary school children about animals. By focusing on balancing gameplay and content, maintaining flow, and through use of visual elements children can be engaged in learning a subject. The game was tested in Maunula primary school and I also received feedback from their 3rd grade teacher. There are various methods that can be applied in educational games especially as technology continues to advance. This thesis presents a few of the methods that games can approach to create effective and engaging learning experiences