Educational Game Design

Educational Science Game

Instructional design of game-based experiential learning activities for a web-based, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) aligned elementary science game built in Unity WebGL.

• Identified learning objectives and mapped the curriculum to game mechanics.

• Conducted learner and content analysis, and employed participatory design techniques with end-users to guide the direction of the game.

• Supported iterative game development based on user testing, qualitative and quantitative user research, and learning analytics.

The goal of this Food Web mini-game was for students to construct a food web to model energy transfer within an ecosystem informed by their own observations of the organisms in the field. Scaffolding from a food chain to a food web and defining concepts such as "competitor" and "predator" was integrated to supplement knowledge gaps. This mini-game is a component of a larger-scope science game.