Jody F. Manning has been a superintendent in New York for more than 20 years, but his experience didn't make his conversation with the woman across the table any easier. "Terry Jones" had made three increasingly urgent phone calls asking to meet about her daughter, whose grades have been dropping precipitously. Jones talked about her…

For a growing group of educators, the online role-playing game World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is a place to go to relax, network, and discover potential learning strategies-- and slay a few monsters if they get in the way. The online role-playing game World of…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate an evidence-based scenario design framework for assessment-based computer games. Design/methodology/approach: The evidence-based scenario design framework is presented and demonstrated by using BELLA, a new assessment-based gaming environment aimed at supporting student learning of…