AZ DELTA

Scaffolding Understanding by Redesigning Games for Education (SURGE) explores the integration of popular game play dynamics with research from the learning sciences, psychology, science education, and computer science to support players in developing robust understandings of core scientific and analytic concepts and processes. 

Digital games generally have simulations at their core. Well-designed digital games help players construct productive mental models for understanding and operating on those underlying simulations. Well-designed games leverage (1) engagement and affective investment, (2) consequential action and meaningful play, (3) implied principled stances and perspectives, and (4) approachable entries and guided trajectories to develop this understanding. 

SURGE explores the designs through which these affordances are leveraged. We focus specifically on designs to support players in explicitly articulating the intuitive understandings they develop through game play in terms of more formal representations, concepts, and processes. To support this explicit articulation, we are exploring the integration and implications of research from the learning sciences, psychology, science education, and computer science