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meaningful play 2008 travel

Poster Information

TitleGame Assessment for Higher Education Curricula: A Beginning
Presenter(s)Elizabeth A. Evans and Laura Christopherson
SessionConference Reception, Game Exhibition, and Poster Session
TimeThursday, October 9, 6:00p-8:00p
LocationEast Lansing Technology Innovation Center
FormatPoster Presentation
DescriptionThis poster will describe preliminary efforts made at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) to design a method to evaluate games that can be used to educate college students. In spring 2008, a high school senior completed a short internship with the UNC Games4Learning initiative. He played 8 games available at no or low cost and wrote reviews of the games which begin to provide us with a better understanding of how students might react to these games. Simultaneously, the authors of this poster began a search to identify more systematic approaches to evaluate serious games to supplement the reviews. Surprisingly, the bulk of what they found was specific to simulations and mostly appeared in management literature. As a result, they began to create an assessment form to be completed when evaluating games to be integrated in a course or curriculum. The authors believe players' reviews combined with a systematic assessment to match faculty needs will lead to curricular game choices that are better able to meet learning objectives and to be an engaging experience for students. This is just the beginning of what the authors believe is needed to fully assess serious games. Future needs include well-designed studies to determine learning outcomes and longitudinal studies that look at long-term retention of content and continued demonstration of skills. Although there are many approaches the authors believe are important to assess these games, these two preliminary pieces--student reviews and a systematic evaluation--are a start.

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