The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the type of exploratory strategy and level of prior knowledge on middle school students' performance and motivation in learning chemical formulas via a 3D role-playing game (RPG). Two types of exploratory strategies-RPG exploratory with worked-example and RPG exploratory without…

During the 2013-2014 academic year, 647 elementary, middle, and high-school students participated in the New Digital Energy Game (NDE) game in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). This is the fourth year that NDE has been implemented in HISD. The game was designed to enrich students' science experiences in order to stimulate their…

This paper describes an educational card game designed to help high school students (grade 10, 15-16 years old) "understand," as opposed to memorize, the periodic table. The game may also be used to identify different chemical elements found in daily life objects. As an additional value, students learn the names and symbols of the displayed…

Learning the symbolic language of chemistry is a difficult task that can be frustrating for students. This article introduces a game, ChemOkey, that can help students learn the names and symbols of common ions and their compounds in a fun environment. ChemOkey, a game similar to Rummikub, is played with a set of 106 plastic or wooden tiles. The…

Sustainable, or "green," manufacturing and its practices are becoming more and more a part of today's industry, including wood product manufacturing. This article provides introductory information on green manufacturing in wood technology and a crossword puzzle based on green manufacturing terms. The authors use the puzzle at the college level to…

In this paper we address the important task of automated discovery of speech act categories in dialogue-based, multi-party educational games. Speech acts are important in dialogue-based educational systems because they help infer the student speaker's intentions (the task of speech act classification) which in turn is crucial to providing adequate…

In this primer we briefly describe our perspective and experience in using data logging to support measurement of student learning in a game testbed ("Save Patch") we developed for research purposes. The goal of data logging is to support the derivation of cognitively meaningful measures and affectively meaningful measures from a combination of…

Virtual gaming has taken the world by storm and is being used by a much larger population than originally anticipated. Since the Wii was put on the market, occupational therapists around the world have begun to incorporate its use as an intervention strategy for patients recovering from a wide scope of ailments. This use is ad hoc, intuitive, and…

Appropriately designed technology-based learning environments such as video games can be used to give immediate and individualized feedback to students. However, little is known about the design and use of feedback in instructional video games. This study investigated how feedback used in a mathematics video game about fractions impacted student…

This paper presents an educational game in mathematics based on an apprenticeship model using a teachable agent, as well as an evaluative study of how the game affects (1) conceptual understanding and (2) attitudes towards mathematics. In addition, we discuss how collaborative and competitive affordances of the game may affect understanding and…

Hospitalised children and young people not only face challenges to their health but also to their continued education and social connections. These challenges can impact on future life trajectories, so it is crucial to maintain learning and socialising. Educational technologies, such as laptops and iPads, are used in the multidisciplinary…

A newspaper numbers game based on simple arithmetic relationships is discussed. Its potential to give students of elementary algebra practice in semi-"ad hoc" reasoning and to build general arithmetic reasoning skills is explored. (Contains 3 figures, 7 tables and 3 notes.)

Understanding counting rules is challenging for students; in particular, they struggle with determining when and how to implement combinations, permutations, and the multiplication rule as tools for counting large sets and computing probability. We present an activity--using ideas from the games of poker and pinochle--designed to help students…

Analyzing log data from educational video games has proven to be a challenging endeavor. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of using cluster analysis to extract information from the log files that is interpretable in both the context of the game and the context of the subject area. If cluster analysis can be used to identify patterns of…

The game "Lights Out" and its mathematical predecessor, the sigma-plus game, has inspired an extensive mathematical literature. In this paper, the original game and a borderless version played on a torus are considered. We define an easy game to be one in which pushing the buttons that are originally lit solves the game. Easy games are classified…