Using Game Design to Promote Play-based Science Inquiry Learning

• In Event: Fiddling on the Fly: Thinking, Learning, and Designing Using Board Games

Abstract

As a community of science educators, we seek constantly to immerse our students in inquiry experiences that involve the authentic use of the scientific method to solve problems. The scientific method includes moving iteratively between (a) a general orientation to the problem, (b) making a hypothesis, (c) experimenting, and (d) formulating an evidence-based conclusion (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council, 1996; National Science Teachers Association, 1995). Rather than viewing scientific inquiry as a series of steps that we ask students to learn, when well-taught, students experience the scientific method as a means of studying a phenomena of interest and rigorously supporting claims with evidence. The scientific method provides a process of forming an informed hypothesis through a guided and meaningful inquiry learning. Yet all too often, students experience aspects of science as a set of rules to be memorized, rather than a set of tools or practices that can be meaningful leveraged in their everyday lives. Often overlooked is how students’ play can promote learning in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1933/2002) and oftentimes resemble the type of inquiry that we would like to see in science education (Calabrese Barton & Osborne, 2002).

More recently, games (and particularly videogames) have been found to be an effective medium for engaging students in science (e.g., Dede & Barab, 2009; Barab et al., 2009). In this paper, we seek to extend this prior work to demonstrate how game design more generally (Kafai, 1995; Peppler & Kafai, 2010) supports students’ legitimate and productive engagement with the scientific method. Specifically, we focus on the potential of game design in supporting students’ engagement with a process that traditionally has been thought to be the exclusive domain of science education. Game design has the potential to support students’ authentic science inquiry and use of the scientific method by leveraging practices tightly aligned with current youth culture. In this way, youth culture is starting point to build a bridge between students’ play practices and the kinds of academic skills that are germane to scientific inquiry.
In this paper, we consider data from 30 middle-school (grades 6-8) students who participated in an in-school, seven-week game design course that specialized in both game design and authentic scientific inquiry methods. We highlight one unit within the curriculum where students used the commercially available U-Build board games to design and test their own theories of “good” game play and reflect on these experiences to learn about how science inquiry operates. We conclude with some practical suggestions for how such an approach to using game design in science education can illuminate concepts that might otherwise be difficult and intangible for students to grasp. Moreover, we make suggestions for how game design and youth culture more generally might be adopted by other science educators and designers.

Authors

• Kylie A. Peppler, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Melissa Sommefeld Gresalfi, Vanderbilt University

• Charlene Ann Volk, Indiana University

• Jacqueline Barnes, Indiana University

• Rafi Santo, Indiana University - Bloomington