Educational games: Grounded in research or fun and exciting?

1. Educational games: Grounded in research or fun and exciting? Wayne HolmesCo-founder of zondle.DPhil candidate, University of Oxford.

2. DPhil research • A design-based investigation of a prototype game for children who are low-attaining in mathematics; • Grounded in educational research: • Principles of an effective numeracy intervention; • Bruner’s ‘modes of representation’ and ‘spiral curriculum’; • Behaviourist and constructivist approaches to learning; • Developed through design-based research: • Three cycles of design, intervention, analysis and reflection; • Researched in real classrooms; • Outcomes: • A game might be most effective when it functions as an artefact that both supports individual learning and stimulates, scaffolds and mediates dialogue-based collaborative learning.

3. zondle • A web and mobile platform that enables teachers and students to create and share games to support teaching and learning; • zondle aims to address the fact that most games-based learning: • adopts a traditional top-down publisher model; • prioritises being cutting-edge and exciting over the needs of real classrooms; • ignores high-quality education and neuroscience research. • zondle enables teachers to use games as they want to use games: • to help motivate and engage children; • to teach whole-classes and promote learning; • to help children consolidate what they’ve been taught; • for children to use as homework; • to help children prepare for high-stakes tests and exams.

4. The zondle approach Database of educational content Database of short-form games zondleinterpreter 1 million + questions 50+ games (web and mobile) 5,000,000 + content / game combinations

5. zondle Team Play • zondle Team Play applies a game-based approach to teaching whole classes; • Grounded in three years of neuroscience and educational technology research by Paul Howard-Jones at the University of Bristol; • Developed through design-based research: • Five cycles of design, intervention, analysis and reflection; • Low-fidelity prototype, grounded in the literature; • Researched in a variety of school classrooms and developed iteratively; • Final version integrated with the zondle platform.

6. zondle Team Play

7. zondle Team Play

8. ...in summary • GBL is all too often grounded in anecdotal evidence (rather than in educational or neuroscience research); • GBL all too often prioritises being fun and exciting over learning or addressing the needs of real classrooms; • GBL can be grounded in, and developed through research AND can be fun and exciting.