Unifying Instructional and Game Design

PurposeInstructional design students’ training may not include game-based learning (GBL). This paper aims to review the literature on GBL to determine the role of the instructional designer who is interested in GBL approaches to enhance learning especially for the novice learner.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology for determining the instructional designers’ roles is based on the comparison of game-based and traditional instructional design and the identification of what is needed to aid instructors and designers in development and evaluation of GBL products.FindingsThe literature reveals that GBL shows learning potential. The existence of slim empirical research cannot posit GBL effectiveness in general, within specific disciplines, or with specific learner types. If GBL is to be effectively included in instructional design, the instructional designers, game designers and educational stakeholders need to collaborate to understand and combine optimal design features that meet both game and education objectives and to develop a common nomenclature so that research and its findings can be effectively communicated.Originality/valueThis review identifies specific digital game-based strategies that align with the learning goals sought in instructional design, differences between game and instructional design and steps needed for the instructional designer to bridge gaps in knowledge or practice between educators, researchers, game designers and instructional designers. These identifications may aid all GBL stakeholders in development of future GBL.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to advance a framework for understanding and teaching game design in higher education, in order to address complexities inherent in teaching game design courses. Everyday teaching and learning game design often deviate from the standard textbook model of game design. In reality everyday teaching and learning operate with handling game design curriculum, how to think games, and how to organise the development process. The presented framework merge curriculum, thinking, and process guided by the game design concept of juiciness. The framework will be presented by dismantling the standard textbook model of game design into three; game design (curriculum), game design thinking (thinking), and game development (organisation). In this perspective game design is concerned with game mechanics, game design thinking preoccupied with paper prototyping, metaphor, and framing, while game developments addresses player experience including play and game testing. This article will coin vertical design as juiciness as opposed to horizontal design understood as expanding system layout. Juiciness will be placed as a guiding principle in the relationship between designers and designed content as an aspect of designer intentions and motivations. Lastly, the content centric framework will be presented by merging game design, game design thinking, game development, vertical design with selected aspects of accepted software development strategies as an approach to teaching and learning game design in higher education.

Advancing VR edutainment design in blended learning: Learners’ views from wine classroom

The curriculum implementation in ASEAN countries is interesting to examine, especially in order to achieve the direction of the digital transformation roadmap of the education system. Research on instructional design can be used as one of the parameters to understand how the general description of implementation achieves curriculum goals. This study aims to examine instructional design research in ASEAN countries during the period 2018-2024 on the implementation of the national curriculum towards the digital transformation of the education system through (1) investigating the general description of instructional design research, (2) examining research characteristics from aspects of research objectives, (3) explaining the implications of findings both theoretically and practically. The documentation study was conducted through bibliometric analysis of articles with keywords against article titles containing the phrase "instructional design" in ASEAN countries from the Scopus database, which produced as many as 37 selected articles during the 2018-2024 period. The results show that the general description and direction of instructional design research objectives in ASEAN countries have been presented comprehensively. Besides that, the theoretical and practical implications of instructional design research on the road map for digital transformation of education systems in ASEAN have been considered. AbstrakImplementasi kurikulum di negara ASEAN menarik diteliti khususnya dalam upaya mencapai arah peta jalan transformasi digital sistem pendidikan. Riset tentang instructional design bisa dijadikan salah satu parameter untuk memahami bagaimana gambaran umum implementasi untuk mencapai tujuan kurikulum. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji riset instructional design di negara ASEAN selama periode 2018-2024 pada implementasi kurikulum nasional dalam menuju transformasi digital sistem pendidikan, melalui: (1) investigasi gambaran umum penelitian instructional design, (2) mengkaji karakteristik penelitian dari aspek tujuan penelitian, (3) menjelaskan implikasi temuan baik secara teoritis maupun praktis. Studi dokumentasi dilakukan melalui analisis bibliometrik terhadap artikel dengan kata kunci terhadap judul artikel yang mengandung frasa “instructional design” di negara ASEAN, dari database scopus yang menghasilkan sebanyak 37 artikel terpilih selama periode tahun 2018-2024. Hasil menunjukan bahwa gambaran umum dan arah tujuan penelitian instructional design di negara ASEAN telah tersaji secara komprehensif, selain itu implikasi teoritis dan praktis dari riset instructional design terhadap peta jalan transformasi digital sistem pendidikan di ASEAN sudah dianggap sejalan.Kata Kunci: bibliometrik; desain pembelajaran; kurikulum; pendidikan; transformasi digital

In the digital age, instructional designers must possess both a sound instructional design knowledge base and solid project management skills that will enable them to complete courseware projects on time, on budget and in conformance with client expectations. Project management skills include the ability to apply repeatable processes, along with interpersonal skills such as communication and leadership skills. However, courses in project management are often absent from the higher education instructional design curriculum, creating a gap between what is learned in instructional design programmes and real‐world practice. In this paper, the author draws on the education and project management fields to examine this gap. The author argues that the gap between instructional design project management models and how instructional design practitioners view project management is a consequence of the divergent perspectives of higher education subcultures and the extent to which those subcultures are likely to embrace cross‐disciplinary subjects such as project management. The author proposes some research and advocacy opportunities for closing the gap between instructional design education and practice.

<span>This study examines research publication and trends in instructional design, as found in selected professional journals during the period 1980-2008. Citation analysis was used to investigate documents relating to instructional design, as indexed in the </span><em>Web of Science</em><span>. </span><em>Instructional design; instruction design; educational design; learning design; teaching design; ID</em><span>, etc, were the key phrases used for searching the documents, and a total of 758 analysed documents were judged relevant to the field of instructional design. The results of the study were explored according to the journal of publication; document type; year of publication; author; author affiliation; country of publication; most frequently used words and phrases; subject; language; cited by years and </span><em>h</em><span> index rating. Notable findings include the most frequently used key words and phrases (after </span><em>instructional design</em><span>, these are </span><em>cognitive load theory</em><span> and </span><em>worked examples</em><span>); regarding subject area, </span><em>education, educational research</em><span>, and </span><em>educational psychology</em><span> dominate. With regards to country of origin, 87% of authors came from only 7 countries, with countries in the Far East being poorly represented.</span>

This paper aims to contribute for the discussion in design teaching and its consequent research context, in design research and teaching. It is intended to discuss the importance of reflecting and analyzing the modus operandi usually adopted and the results obtained by adopting a design process methodology in the educational field, particularly in Communication Design Education. Therefore, our main goal is to implement and propose a methodology centered and driven by practical action, as much as possible in a real context scenario, structured according to the different phases of a design project. Signed in collaborative processes, the action developed it is characterized by the interdisciplinary dialogue in formal, informal, generational and culturally plural contexts able to characterize and test and evaluate the approach to different thematic, enabling to enriches and optimize the design experience as the process of apprehension.

The teaching of 3D digital game design requires the development of students’ meta-skills, from story creativity to 3D model construction, and even the visualization process in design thinking. The characteristics a good game designer should possess have been identified as including redesign things, creativity thinking and the ability to visualize ideas from imagination. Therefore, 3D visualization is a key skill in this context. To help students fully focus on game design rather than on complicated 3D modeling or animation skills, this study developed an authoring package that is integrated with Google 3D Warehouse, SketchUp, and a web-based 3D multi-user platform: 3D Cyber Worlds. The proposed game design authoring package was used with 53 college students for one semester, while a total of 108 students were involved in the overall study. The results indicate that the package achieved its aim of in assisting students in the game design process, including that of 3D modeling, and is feasible for future development using advance web technologies. Examples of the students’ game design projects and feedback on the use of this authoring package are also presented and discussed.

\n Increase both students motivation and learning outcomes in Collaborative Learning (CL) activities is a challenge that the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) community has been addressing in the past last years. The use of CSCL scripts to structure and orchestrate the CL process has been shown to be effective to support meaningful interactions and better learning, but the scripted collaboration often does not motivate students to participate in the CL process, which makes more difficult the use of scripts over time in CL activities. To deal with the motivational problems, the researchers, educators and practitioners are now looking at gamification as a solution to motivate and engage students. However, the gamification is a complex task, requiring from instructional designers and practitioners, knowledge about game elements (such as leaderboards and point systems), game design (e.g. how to combine game elements) and their impact on motivation, engagement and learning. Moreover, the gamification is too context-dependent, requiring personalization for each participant and situation. Thus, to address these issues, an ontological engineering approach to gamify CL sessions has been proposed and conducted in this dissertation. In this approach, an ontology has been formalized to enable the systematic representation of knowledge extracted from theories and best practices related to gamification. In this ontology, the concepts, extracted from practices and theories related to gamification, and identified as relevant to deal with the motivational problems in scripted collaborative learning, have been formalized as ontological structures to be used by computer-based mechanisms and procedures in intelligent-theory aware systems. These mechanisms and procedures with ontological structures aim to provide support to give advices and recommendations that will help instructional designers and practitioners to gamify CL sessions. To validate this approach, and to demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency into deal with the motivational problems in scripted collaborative learning, four empirical studies were conducted in real situations at the University of São Paulo with undergraduate Computer Science and Computer Engineering students. The results of the empirical studies demonstrated that, for CL activities where the CSCL scripts are used as a method to orchestrate and structure the CL process, the ontological engineering approach to gamify CL scenarios is an effective and efficient solution to deal with the motivational problems because the CL sessions obtained by this approach affected in a proper way the participants motivation and learning outcomes.\n

Instructional video game development is occurring in both the commercial game development and the instructional design/development communities, but regularly in isolation from one another. While many proclaim that game-based learning offers an instructional revolution, the empirical results on instructional effectiveness have been mixed. These mixed findings may be due to the contrasting approaches utilized within these two communities. These communities differ with respect to prioritizing goals and design/development processes. However, the creation of an effective instructional video game—one that both motivates and teaches—is dependent on the successful partnering of these communities. Accordingly, this chapter elucidates the commonalities and differences in the development goals and approaches of these communities and discusses how best practices of each community should be blended for optimal instructional video game design. This chapter also includes relevant experiences from an instructional PC-video game development project, illustrating challenges faced and new opportunities afforded via a collaborative development effort.

The use of instructional design theory and approaches has been dramatically increased in the field of education. This profession has made tremendous improvement in solving real world authentic problems. Different types of instructional approaches are very effective in designing curriculum depending upon the skills, knowledge, and task requirements of courses. However, there is less literature available in the area of use of instructional design and performance improvement in strategic HRM. Instructional design is a very innovative field and it can do wonders in the areas of complex problem solving, knowledge construction, and performing real authentic tasks in the business scenarios, if the principles, approaches and theories of instructional design with performance improvement models are adopted in a right context and with alignment of organization task requirements. This paper is an attempt to strengthen the role of human resource as a strategic business partner through insinuating and integrating the fields of human performance improvement and instructional design in a business context. We call the 21st century the era of strategic human resources. There are so many convoluted HR roles and verbiages in the field of training and development, learning at the workplace, talent management, and compensation. There are abundance of books written on the role of human

A growing body of research is focusing on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and computational thinking (CT) to enhance student learning outcomes. Many researchers have designed instructional activities to achieve various learning goals within this field. Despite the prevalence of studies focusing on instructional design and student learning outcomes, how instructional efforts result in the integration of AI and CT in students’ learning processes remains unclear. To address this research gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of empirical studies that have integrated AI and CT for student development. We collected 18 papers from four prominent research databases in the fields of education and AI technology: Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE, and ACM. We coded the collected studies, highlighting the students’ learning processes in terms of research methodology and context, learning tools and instructional design, student learning outcomes, and the interaction between AI and CT. The integration of AI and CT occurs in two ways: the integration of disciplinary knowledge and leveraging AI tools to learn CT. Specifically, we discovered that AI- and CT-related tools, projects, and problems facilitated student-centered instructional designs, resulting in productive AI and CT learning outcomes.

Serious games are, at their core, exploratory learning environments designed around the pedagogy and constraints associated with specific knowledge domains. This focus on instructional content is what separates games designed for entertainment from games designed to educate. As instructional designers and educators, the authors want serious game play to provide learners with a deep understanding of the domain, allowing them to use their knowledge in practice to think through multifaceted problems quickly and efficiently. Attention to the design of serious game affordances is essential to facilitating the development of domain knowledge during game play. As such, the authors contend that serious game designers should take advantage of existing prescriptions found in research on knowledge development in exploratory learning environments and tests of adaptive instructional designs in these environments. It is with this intention that the authors use evidence from research in cognitive processes and simulation design to propose design heuristics for serious game affordances to optimize knowledge development in games.

This paper offers a newly conceptualized modular framework for digital literacy that defines this concept as a task-driven “social constructivist digital literacy,” comprising 6 practice domains grounded in Constructionism and social constructivism: Create, Manage, Publish, Socialize, Research, Surf. The framework articulates possible instructional design and research operationalizations for the concept, based upon a coordinated set of activities centering on student game design. The paper then reports on results of an implementation study involving game design drawing upon the framework, addressing ways in which the practice domains inter-operate when the specified instruction is offered as a coordinated intervention. The study reports change in student engagement in activities within each of the framework’s practice domain, as a result of participating in a comprehensive game design learning program, and reports ways in which change in activities at school contribute to change in activities at home, when no homework is required, suggesting transfer. Findings indicate that the 6 practice domains factor and inter-correlate, and that for several practice domains, change in engagement at school correlates to change in at-home engagement. The theoretical perspectives underscoring the definition and conceptualization presented are supported by the empirical findings. Researchers may draw upon this study’s framework approach, and specific definition for social constructivist digital literacy, in building towards a more coordinated agenda of comparative research on this concept.

Despite the growing popularity and widespread use of serious games, the development of effective serious games is difficult, requiring an appropriate balance between game design and instructional design. Although there are fundamental differences between games developed purely for entertainment compared to those developed for “serious” purposes, there are currently no standard development tools specifically intended for serious game design and development available that encourage developers to follow a set of best practices. Rather, developers of serious games often rely on existing game engines and frameworks that are specific to entertainment-based game development. Given the availability of a large number of game engines and frameworks, deciding on which one to use to develop a serious game may be difficult, yet the choice of engine or framework can play a significant role in the development process. In this paper we present the results of a literature review that examined the frameworks and game engines that are used to develop serious games. We provide a list of the most commonly used frameworks and game engines and summarize their features. Knowledge of the frameworks and game engines that are most popular and details regarding why they are popular may prove to be useful to serious games developers seeking such tools. The chapter ends with a brief discussion regarding a framework that is currently being developed specifically for the development of serious games. Through consultation with the potential users of the framework (serious games developers), the framework aims to strike a balance between ease of use and functionality, while providing the user with the necessary options and tools to ideally develop effective serious games.