Connecting Learning Goals and Component Cognitive Skills in Digital Games

Connecting Learning Goals and Component Cognitive Skills in Digital Games Stephen S. Killingsworth (s.killingsworth@vanderbilt.edu) Department of Teaching and Learning, Box 230, 230 Appleton Place Nashville, TN 37203 USA Douglas Clark (doug.clark@vanderbilt.edu) Department of Teaching and Learning, Box 230, 230 Appleton Place Nashville, TN 37203 USA Abstract Growing bodies of research have investigated how digital games might be used as pedagogical tools and separately, how playing commercial games influences basic cognitive capacities or skills. The goal of the present research is to draw from these separate lines of research to ask how changes in basic cognitive capacities and formal learning gains may be related. The present study employed a game in which a ship moves through different environments using forces. The game teaches the basic relationships between objects and forces in Newton’s Laws of Motion. Students played one of two versions of the game. The predictive version encouraged planning and reflection, by allowing students unlimited time to place forces along a path. In the real-time version, forces immediately affected the player when selected. The results suggest that learning was equivalent across the versions, but changes in attentional capacities may differentially contribute to learning between versions. Keywords: Education; Psychology; Learning; Classroom studies; Experimental research with children; Digital games Introduction Video games have been present in mainstream culture for decades, but have recently become a popular topic for research. One branch of research on video games in Cognitive and Social Psychology, has investigated the impact of recreational game play on basic cognition and behavior. A second branch of research has investigated the impact of games specifically designed to teach concepts within a discipline. Though these divisions do not cover all the relevant work, they do account for a majority of publications on videogames. In the present work, we investigate how games can train concepts and basic cognitive capacities. Beyond this, we begin to address the complex question of how cognitive skill training and discipline-specific learning may each contribute to learning gains on an assessment of students’ basic understandings of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Much of the recent research on videogames in Cognitive Psychology has been connected to the somewhat surprising finding that some of commercial action video games may actually train basic cognitive capacities of players (e.g. Dye, Green, & Bavelier, 2009; Feng, Spence, & Pratt, 2007). One particularly interesting finding is that games may train networks that control three basic aspects of visual attention (Dye et al., 2009). There have been some concerns about the conclusions drawn in these studies (Boot, Blakely, & Simons, 2011). However, the possibility of a positive impact of games that may otherwise have negative social effects (e.g., Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007) has been a compelling topic for research. Other research on videogames for learning has focused on learning discipline specific content knowledge, skills, processes, attitudes, and engagement (e.g., NRC, 2010). This education-focused work spans several fields and is often referred to as research on “serious games” or “games for learning” although there are multiple other names as well. Again, this work has typically focused on how games produce learning gains in a particular discipline or skill. The present project differs from most prior Cognitive Psychology and Education-focused work, but is designed to benefit from the approaches of both of those areas of research. The present work uses a conceptually-integrated game (Clark & Martinez-Garza, 2012) under development called EGAME in which the target concepts are integrated directly into gameplay mechanics, rather than being presented through separate activities. The basic prototype of the game involved in this study (see Figure 1) was designed to promote an accurate intuitive understanding of Newton’s Laws. The game provides puzzle-like scenarios in which players use a limited palette of forces to move a ship to a target. Unlike in many popular games, movement in this game is controlled by combining unidirectional forces of varying magnitudes and durations. Furthermore, the game models realistic motion and is sensitive to the constraints of the environment (e.g., the presence or absence of friction). Two versions of our game prototype were used in this study. The first, predictive, version of the game was designed to encourage planning and reflection. In this version, students dragged forces from a palette onto a level map. The students would then “run” the simulation to observe the results of their choices. This design minimized competition between cognitive resources necessary to select forces and the resources available to observe and evaluate the effects of choices. The placement play phase involved selecting locations for forces, looking at the palette, and dragging icons with the mouse. The observation play phase involved watching the ship respond to forces placed on the map (and optionally stopping the simulation). The real-time control version of the game combined placement and observation. Students had unlimited time to look at a level and plan before selecting a force, but as each force icon was clicked, the ship moved accordingly. In this