Formative Research for STEM Educational Games
Lessons From the Children’s Television Workshop
Abstract
Millions in taxpayer and foundation euros and dollars have been spent building and testing educational video games, games for health, and serious games. What have been the fruits of this frenzy of activity? What educational video game has had the reach and impact of Sesame Street or Blues Clues television shows? By comparison, the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) managed to get Sesame Street off the ground within a couple of years, writing the basic scientific literature on educational media design in the process. Not only is Sesame Street well known and proven, it laid the basis for every effective educational show to follow. This article explores the differences between the CTW scientific approach to educational media production and the mostly nonscientific approach consuming so many resources in the educational games, games for health, and serious games movements. Fundamental scientific questions that remain unanswered are outlined.
References
2004). Simulations and the future of learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
(1970). The first year of Sesame Street: An evaluation. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
(2013). Exergaming in youth: Effects on physical and cognitive health. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 221, doi: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000137
(1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals; Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York, NA: Longmans.
(1998). Developmental differences at play: Children’s selective attention and performance in video games. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 19, 615–624. doi: 10.1016/S0193-3973(99)80058-6
(2009). What do children learn from playing digital games? In , Serious Games: Mechanisms and effects (pp. 129–140). New York, NY: Routledge.
(2004). Boys’ and girls’ use of cognitive strategy when learning to play video games. The Journal of General Psychology, 131, 151–158.
(2008). Impasse-driven learning in the context of video games. Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 1530–1541. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2007.05.010
(2010). Newsgames: Journalism at play. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(2008). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica, 129, 387–98. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.09.005
(2011). The challenge in creating games for education: Aligning mental models with game models. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 82–87.
(2010). Wee Wii: Preschoolers and motion-based game play. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 2, 1–17. doi: 10.4018/jgcms.2010040101
(2012). The Learning Games Design Model: Immersion, collaboration, and outcomes-driven development. International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 2, 87–110. doi: 10.4018/ijgbl.2012070106
(2002). Improving children’s mental rotation accuracy with computer game playing. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 163, 272–282.
(2007). Educational video game design: A review of the literature. Journal of Applied Educational Technology, 4, 21–31.
(2001). “G” is for growing. Thirty years of research on children and Sesame Street. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
. (2009). Development of infants’ attention to faces during the first year. Cognition, 110, 160–170.
(2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave/Macmillan.
(2003). Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature, 423, 534–538. doi: 10.1038/nature01647
(2006a). Effect of action video games on spatial distribution of visuospatial attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 1465–1478. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.32.6.1465
(2006b). Enumeration versus multiple object tracking: The case of action video game players. Cognition, 101, 217–245. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2005.10.004
(1974). Gratifications of television viewing and their correlates for British children. In , The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research (pp. 71–92). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
(2010). Orientations to video games among gender and age groups. Simulation & Gaming, 41, 238–259. doi: 10.1177/1046878108319930
(1994). Two-dimensional representation of movement through three-dimensional space: The role of video game expertise. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1, 87–103.
(1994). Cognitive socialization by computer games in two cultures: Inductive discovery or mastery of an iconic code? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15, 59–85. doi: 10.1016/0193-3973(94)90006-X
(2005). The effectiveness of instructional games: A literature review and discussion. Orlando, FL Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division. Retrieved from stnet.dtie.mil/oai/
(2012). Age differences in online processing of video: An eye movement study. Child Development, 83, 497–507.
(1974). Children and television: Lessons from Sesame Street. New York, NY: Vintage Books/Random House.
(2009). Video games: A route to large-scale STEM education? Science, 323, 79–82.
(1994). Effects of video game playing on measures of spatial performance: Gender effects in late adolescence. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15, 33–58. doi: 10.1016/0193-3973(94)90005-1
(2010). Children’s motivations for video game play in the context of normal development. Review of General Psychology, 14, 180–187. doi: 10.1037/a0018984
(1973). Formative research in the development of children’s television. New York, NY: Children’s Television Workshop.
(2002). An investigation of the cognitive processes engaged in by recreational computer game players: Implications for skills of the future. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 34, 336–350.
(2000). Digital game-based learning. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
(2010). Classifying serious games. In , Serious games: Mechanisms and effects (pp. 10–24). New York, NY: Routledge/LEA.
(1988). Using Sesame Street to facilitate children’s recognition of letters and numbers. Educational Communication and Technology Journal, 36, 15–21.
(2003). Zero to six: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. A Kaiser Family Foundation Report Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation.
(2010). Serious games: Mechanisms and effects. New York, NY: Routledge/LEA.
. (2005). Television in young children’s social relationships. Yearbook of Population Research in Finland, 41, 75–96.
(1974). Uses and gratifications: A paradigm outlined. In , The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives of gratifications research (pp. 269–286). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
(2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass Communication and Society, 3, 3–37. doi: 10.1207/S15327825MCS0301_02
(1977). Effects of encouraging Israeli mothers to co-observe Sesame Street with their five-year-olds. Child Development, 48, 1146–1151.
(1961). Television in the lives of our children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(1995). Preschool children’s comprehension of a Sesame Street video tape: The effects of repeated viewing and previewing instructions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 43, 49–60.
(2009). The impact of serious games on childhood development. In , Serious games: Mechanisms and effects (pp. 145–166). New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
(2006). Matching computer game genres to educational outcomes. Electronic Journal of Communication. Retrieved from www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/016/1/01615.HTML
(2003). Relationship between developmental stages and video game uses and gratifications, game preference and amount of time spent in play. San Diego, CA: International Communication Association.
(2002). Domain specificity of spatial expertise: The case of videogame players. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 97–115. doi: 10.1002/acp.759
(2010). Video games and spatial cognition. Review of General Psychology, 14, 92–104. doi: 10.1037/a0019491
(1994). Effect of video game practice on spatial skills in girls and boys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15, 13–32.
(2007, September). Designing games to effect social change. Paper presented at the conference of the Digital Games Research Association, Tokyo, Japan.
(2002). Expert behavior in children’s video game play. Simulation and Gaming, 33, 28–48. doi: 10.1177/1046878102033001002
(