This research is about bringing social justice art education into classrooms through the medium of video games and exploring the ways in which video game design can be a learning tool that can make contributions to and engage in social justice work. Drawing from a case-study research project with a small group of middle school students, through…

Educators have recently begun using digital breakout games as an instructional strategy in K-12 and higher ed curricula. However, research has thus far explored outcomes associated with playing these games, rather than designing them. This study investigates what happened when 23 preservice teachers in a technology integration course designed…

When we give meanings to a physical space, we engage in place-making. With technologies, the place-making activities can be extended to virtual and hybrid spaces. In games, actual or virtual space can gain narrative and meaning transforming into a playce (i.e., a place for play). We suggest that playce-making (i.e., transforming a space into a…

All over the world and especially in Turkey, the success level regarding math is well below the desired rate. The main reasons for this situation are negative attitudes and anxiety towards math. It is observed that the students and the teachers experience anxiety about the Arithmetic Operations, which is one of the beginning subjects of math. On…

This study looks at how students embody their ideas about geometry conjectures and how those ideas travel within and between student groups. In one classroom of a Title 1 high school, students participated in a three-part program in which they: (1) played "The Hidden Village," a motion-capture video game where they assess the veracity of…

The purpose of this research is to examine the contents of the representations that students used while producing digital games in the scope of STEM education. The descriptive survey model among the other quantitative research methods has been used. Within the scope of this purpose, 300 games from the competition arranged throughout Turkey with…

This paper presents a game-design workshop built around a digital art installation featuring video games displayed over a real-world skyscraper to stimulate students' interest in computer science and a study testing its short-term effects on improving middle school students' computational thinking (CT) skills and attitudes towards computing.…

FLEET is a free ship-design simulator that reaches students in their native environment--video games. It is also a physics simulator that applies content first learned through hands-on scientific investigations. Using FLEET, students design and use ships for various naval missions by mastering scientific concepts such as force, energy, and work,…

This action research investigates DigiPen, an innovative locally developed secondary school course where students are actively engaged in project-based learning while studying how to work effectively in teams focused on digital game design. Students apply art, math, physics, and computer science knowledge and learn important life skills. DigiPen…

The case study research reported in this paper followed the iterative design trajectory of youth game designers (ages 11-17) in a week-long summer game design camp, focused on the fundamentals of video game design. Drawing on data from a daily conceptual pitch and feedback activity, the research team traced the iterative design trajectory for one…

This paper describes the development and evaluation of an interactive, narrative-based, multimedia game to promote learning and communication about sexual violence and health topics. High school-aged participants created the game concept in a three-week workshop, after which assets were assembled and refined by a university-based game design lab.…

Collaboration is crucial to everything from product development in the workplace to research design in academia, yet there is no consensus on best practice when it comes to teaching collaborative skills. We explore one promising option: collaborative scaffolding in educational video games. Through this methodology, we can impart collaborative…

E-Brock Bugs is a serious educational game (SEG) about probability which was created based on Devlin's design principles for games whose players adopt identities of mathematically able persons. This kind of games in which "players think and act like real world professionals" has been called epistemic. This article presents an empirical…

We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for middle school classrooms during the past seven years. The designs have evolved dramatically in terms of the roles and relationships of the formal representations, phenomenological representations, and control schemes. Phenomenological representations…

This paper describes the findings of a pilot study that used robotics and game design to develop middle school students' computational thinking strategies. One hundred and twenty-four students engaged in LEGO® EV3 robotics and created games using Scalable Game Design software. The results of the study revealed students' pre-post self-efficacy…