Strategies for Endogenous Design of Educational Games

Abstract

Educational game designers strive to fulfill the promise of making learning fun. Games with endogenous design can fulfill this promise. In endogenous design, the gameplay emerges from the content, thus seamlessly integrating the act of playing with learning. However, a review of literature informs us of the lack of guidance on the endogenous design of educational games. There is a need to develop a framework which can aid designers achieve endogenous design. In this paper, we propose strategies for the endogenous design of educational games. We conduct in-situ studies using think-aloud protocol analysis to extract the tacit knowledge that designers discreetly use in practice. We synthesize the extracted knowledge into concise design strategies. The identification of these design strategies is a significant step towards building a framework for endogenous design of educational games.