New Summer Course: Design of Learning Games

Dr. Fengfeng Ke will offer a new course online this summer. If you are into game based learning, this is the course for you!

EME5614 Design of Learning Games (2014 Summer, Online, Session C, currently listed as EME6635-0004 to 0007)

This course is designed to guide students to design and prototype learning games by understanding and applying the interdisciplinary principles of game design, psychology of play, education, and cognitive science. The course will review the design theories of educational gaming and examine how instructional designers can leverage digital culture to design a game-based instructional system. The course will also guide students to identify and implement  the foundational elements of game design (i.e., game setting, storytelling and narrative, character development, user experience, and gameplay), genres of games, and specific features of learning-game design (e.g., motivational analysis, instructional overlay), and exemplary web-based learning-game design and development tools (e.g., Unity 3D).

 

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

1.    Recognize the following elements of learning-game design: Integration between play and learning engagement, the balance between simplicity, efficiency, and playability against realism, and the balance between richness and complexity in learning game design.

2.    Describe basic game concepts, such as challenge, gameplay, setting, interaction model, perspective, players’ role, and game machines.

3.    Identify genres of games appropriate to various learners and learning contexts.

4.    Evaluate features of games appropriate for instruction and learning.

5.    Design a learning game by completing game world, storytelling, character development, user experience creation, and gameplay.

6.    Prototype a learning game using Unity3D.

7.  User-test the learning game prototype.