Pedagogy in Educational Simulations and Games

Educational simulations and serious games hold great potential for creating engaging and productive learning environments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) domains. In this paper, we present and reflect on some of our research findings from a series of studies on a computer simulation in the domain of electricity. These studies used the same simulation with varying instructional designs and over a range of grades. Interestingly, each design had a unique influence on either student performance or student engagement, or both. We hope our results can provide insight for designers producing simulations (or, serious games) for education and for educators utilizing these designs in practical settings.