Solving technology problems, one at a time
A group of researchers headed by Katherine Wilson has done a review of the literature about the effectiveness of serious games. They found that very hard evidence is available: most is anecdotal and suggestive, particularly with respect to which game elements promote which outcomes in learning. However the existing research is suggestive of relationships that could be the subject of future research. Wilson’s group listed fourteen proposals for such research, which could be very useful as guidelines in designing learning games, even if they aren’t scientifically proven.
Continue readingNote: This series of posts is from the handout for a talk on serious games, given at UMHS on May 12.
We all have an idea of what a game is, but it is not so easy to define precisely what makes games different from other activities. No definition of games is entirely complete, but we can approach an understanding by considering games in relation to similar activities, such as
reading stories, watching movies, playing with toys, solving puzzles,
and so on, and try to see where the significant differences lie.
Stories, games, toys, puzzles, races, etc. all have some attributes in common, but the proportions of those
attributes make some activities more gamelike. Thinking about the role
of attributes such as interactivity, representation, challenge, and risk can help us understand the nature of a particular learning game,
what types of learning objectives it might be most effectively used
for, and what kind of learner might benefit from it.
If you do any work with Adobe Captivate, you probably have experience with Captivate’s tendency to corrupt files. The last Captivate project I worked on gave me a chance to get reaquainted with this feature, so I am posting the solution which saved my work:
First, you must know the exact size of the old project. If you are using an odd size, be sure to note it down. Create a new, blank project at that size. Select “File>Import Slides/Objects” and import all the slides and their objects from the corrupted project. If you don’t see any slides to import, you are probably out of luck.
The knowledgebase article on adobe.com does not seem to be available anymore, but the cached version is still available on Google:
Continue reading