To me, video games are experiences. Just like we can have good and bad experiences, however, we can also create good and bad games. This is especially true with educational games. While making educational games it seems that most designers miss the forest for the trees. They become so focused on having the curriculum apparent (perhaps because it makes assessment easier) that they forget to design an experience. This results in a lackluster and forgettable experience comparable to a worksheet with stickers. I want to move beyond that and emphasize both parts equally. I understand that this is a difficult problem. One which brings with it questions that relate to motivation, game design, and story telling in addition to curriculum construction. I am willing and eager to learn more about these subjects so that I can create rewarding, and memorable, experiences that help to enrich a student’s mind.

When thinking about creating experiences in videogames, especially when creating educational experiences, I can’t help but think of books. A book does not have to insert a certain number of words in order to be considered an educational experience. Even when the overt goal of a book is to teach another subject (for example a textbook) there are still good texts (ones that take the time to scaffold, but challenge the students), and bad texts (ones that simply have a fixed number of examples deemed to be important but that have no context).

Due to my recent transfer to C&I, I’ve had to take a look at my research interests and really investigate what I would like to study. I decided that I would like to focus my energy on trying to answer questions that deal with creating meaningful educational experience.  How can we present educational concepts while maintaining the player’s interest? How can we make educational games things that people are excited about and would want to play?  How much can we suspend belief before the ideas become too abstract? How explicit do we have to be about concepts before they can be transferred? I’m sure that there are quite a few texts that deal with these subjects and I’m excited to read more about them.