We present a tool, one that is both a stand-alone web-based video game and a Python package, designed for students to explore a particle's wave function on one-dimensional potential surfaces. The tool relies on a basis set formalism and can, therefore, explore any one-dimensional potential surface imaginable. This tool also lets students interact…

This study examines the design and enactment of a secondary physics unit on electromagnetism. The unit used an educational videogame to support peer dialogic engagement in a Singapore secondary school by engaging learners with qualitative physics phenomena. As an example of game-based learning, the unit includes activities and resources that…

Feature engineering, the construction of contextual and relevant features from system log data, is a crucial component of developing robust and interpretable models in educational data mining contexts. The practice of feature engineering depends on domain experts and system developers working in tandem in order to creatively identify actions and…

This dissertation research focuses on investigating the incidence of student self-regulated learning behavior, and examines patterns in student affective states that accompany such self-regulated behavior. This dissertation leverages prediction models of student affective states in the Physics Playground educational game platform to identify…

The aim of this study is to design an argumentation-based educational digital game to teach the subject of force. Through a design-based research method, each game section includes the argumentation questions that foster students to think about the 'force' subject. We pilot studied the game with 12 grade 4 students in a state primary school. After…

Creativity has been of research interest to psychologists dating back many decades, and is currently recognized as one of the essential skills needed to succeed in our complex, interconnected world. One medium that has affordances to assess and support creativity in young people is video games. In this paper, we briefly discuss the literature on…

Researching informal gameplay can be challenging, since as soon as a formal study design is imposed, it becomes neither casual nor self-motivated. As a case study of a non-invasive design, we analyze publicly posted gameplay videos to assess the effectiveness of a physics educational video game on special relativity. These videos offer unique…

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,…

We examined the use and effectiveness of an incentive system--one of the five elements of a theory-based motivational architecture in educational games that we proposed--in a computer-based physics game on students' learning and performance. The incentive system's purpose was to motivate students to access learning supports designed to facilitate…

We conducted an exploratory study on affect regulation during game-based learning where 110 college-aged participants (M[subscript age] = 22.14, SD[subscript age] = 1.24; 50.0% female; 70.0% White) played an easy, medium, and difficult level of an educational game (Physics Playground) while self-reporting their strongest affective state and…

We describe an analysis of the conservation of momentum in the video game Osmos, which demonstrates that the potential of video game analysis extends far beyond kinematics. This analysis can serve as the basis of an inquiry momentum lab that combines interesting derivations, video-based data collection, and insights into the subtle decisions that…

While video games have become a source of excitement for educational designers, creating informal game experiences that players can draw on when thinking and reasoning in non-game contexts has proved challenging. In this paper we present a design principle for creating educational video games that enables players to draw on knowledge resources…

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…

Gaming is becoming an effective form of learning and assessment and shouldn't be overlooked in an increasingly technological world. The games described in this article ("Impulse," "Quantum Spectre," and "Ravenous"), entertaining enough to be played by the general public, are also appropriate and useful in a classroom…

The goal of this study was to determine whether a game-based immersion experience in an introductory undergraduate course in education had an impact on pre-service teachers' skills, beliefs, and confidence using games for teaching academic content. 55 pre-service secondary-education teachers participated in the study. Their first course in the…