GAME
DESIGN

Relatedly, there are many aspects of Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation built into this game. These concepts derive from Lepper & Henderlong and Ryan and Deci.

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Lepper & Henderlong's 4 C's Framework (Challenge, Curiosity, Control, and Context) overlaps with many of the attributes mentioned above in regards to Challenge (Competency), Curiosity (Relatedness), and Control (Autonomy). For Context, the aspect of situated learning environments will address this construct in allowing students to learn through real-world situations.​

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Additionally, considerations from Lepper & Henderlong's extrinsic motivation cautions will be taken into account. Extrinsic motivations may be used strategically in the game, such as prizes for specific behaviors in team collaboration, communication, and the fastest time. Prizes for "fastest time" will be scrutinized to ensure it does not negatively impact intrinsic motivation. Similarly, some elements of the game will be intrinsically motivating for players such as the themes, areas of assessment, the storylines, images, or assets, while other elements will be extrinsically motivating for players, like competition for the top score, prizes, recognition, and grades if used as an assessment. A balance between the two motivations will be key in keeping players engaged throughout the game.

 

Ryan and Deci's Self-Determination Theory of the interconnectedness between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation will apply here. Moving students who may not find the theme interesting from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation is one of the goals of this project. For example, if an educator is teaching Mathematics, some students may not be intrinsically motivated to learn those concepts so we may need to start with extrinsically motivation to help them start the game, then move them to be intrinsically motivated as they play the game. Using data to tap into their behaviors, such as observing what interactions they are interested in while playing, will help educators with this transition.

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Some aspects of Brophy's Framework of Motivational Zone of Proximal Development also apply here.

• Puzzles will start with what is relevant to the learner, and the difficulty of those puzzles should land within a student's Zone of Proximal Development. This is established using a learner profile and a few early benchmark questions. Students come from diverse backgrounds with diverse experiences. It's difficult to assess what information or experience a player brings to a game versus another student. These potential gaps may influence the final assessment scores.

• Educators could use these assessments over time to get more accurate data on individual ZPD. For instance, if these games were played throughout a semester, the educator could analyze the data from a previous game to create a new game. In regards to ZPD, the question difficulty could change based on how well a student did in a previous game.

• Hints, of which a limited number will be available for all students, will serve as scaffolding for students as they encounter more difficult puzzles. Hints may be given based on user frustration regardless of whether the student asks for them. This ensures that students do not get too frustrated and disengage from the activity.

 

Another important theoretical framework I used is Csikszentmihalyi's Flow State in order to keep the students engaged and within their own Flow Channel. I accomplish this by altering the difficulty level of the puzzles in the room (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).

• Puzzles frequently adjust so that they are not too difficult, which will turn students away, or too easy, which will make students bored quickly. This can easily be done in individual gameplay but is more challenging to do in team play.

• There are different levels of hints available to players if puzzles are too difficult to solve. These hints could be static or dynamic. Static hints would have information available at any time, while dynamic hints could provide information based on different factors such as time or close answers (e.g. format is incorrect). Puzzles may have multiple hints that provide different levels of support. For instance, the first hint could be general information while the second hint could be more detailed information on how to solve the puzzle. As noted above, hints are used as scaffolding but could also help keep players within their Flow Channel. If the game detects players are disinterested because the puzzles are too difficult, the hints could automatically appear without a cost to the player in order to keep them engaged.

• Hints could also be paid for by students using reward points. Rewards points would be distributed as extrinsic motivation and students could exchange them for more hints. Hints could also be distributed unequally to address individual learning needs. Some students with learning dis/abilities could be given more hints.

 

Potential applicaitons of Simulations could also be used in this game. Simulations may help students learn what they did correctly and incorrectly and how to improve their performance the next time they attempt the activity.

• One example is that students can watch a simulation of the virtual escape room after they complete the same escape room to see what moves they did correctly and incorrectly. They may trigger new ways of approaching problems besides future escape rooms. This will help students reflect on what they did best and what to work on in the next game.

• Simulations could also show how different students respond to the same puzzles. For example, simulations could be used to cater to students of diverse backgrounds (age, gender, location, socio-economic status, knowledge of themes and concepts, interests, etc.). These data points may be most interesting to escape room designers who could adjust the puzzles to make them more accessible to everyone. One example may be changing the language of how a puzzle is written, providing more aids for students with dis/abilities such as a text-reader for text written puzzles, or ensuring the content is not offensive like referencing facts about racial prejudice or inequality (e.g. removing a reference to a person in history who may have had a discriminatory view of certain people).

• Simulations may be an important feature for educators who are customizing and tweaking puzzles. They can simulate how students will respond to the puzzles (e.g. how difficult they are) or the average time a student takes to solve a puzzle to ensure the room is designed fairly and appropriately.

• If the escape room uses emerging technologies like AR/VR, simulations will have an important role in getting the experience right for players. A virtualizaiton of a physical escape room will have many challenging components, including interactions and communication with other players in space. Simulations could predict some of these use cases which would influence how the game is designed.

 

Aspects of Self-Efficacy (Bandura) and Growth Mindset (Dweck) are key to continously iterate the design of the rooms and puzzles to ensure that students believe they can actually escape the rooms.

• Self-efficacy is important for students to believe that they can solve all the puzzles and escape from the room. Students who don't believe this are less inclined to participate in the activity and potentially may not even try while being in the room. Necessary primers from educators are needed before students even engage in the activity. For example, educators may talk about how everyone can beat the game, remove the timer if needed, or even give out sample questions ahead of time so players know what to expect before playing the game. Self-efficacy may be an important predictor of player success.

• A Growth Mindset is important for students who work collaboratively with others in the same room. Some students may believe their peers are "smarter" than they are and will rely on them to solve puzzles in the room. Having a growth mindset will enable students to try puzzles even if they do not know the answer or have as deep of knowledge as others on their team. This concept corresponds to Relatedness in SDT - students tend to engage in puzzles more if they feel a sense of belonging. Establishing this connection is another goal of this game.

• Students with a growth mindset will also be more inclined to play more future escape room games, especially if they did not complete one. This mindset will encourage them to try it again even after they may have failed.

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One of the most important frameworks I use from our class is Seyedahmad Rahimi's concept of Stealth Assessments. His application of Stealth Assessments in Physics Playground was a great example of what I am trying to accomplish with this game. The ability to adjust different aspects of the game to assess students secretly is fundamental to providing alternative methods to learning over traditional classroom tools like paper-based exams.

• There are many arguments about today's assessment methods. Some argue that assessments are great at understanding where a learner needs help, while others believe that assessments could misinterpret a student's abilities. The side that opposes assessments also argues that students who perform better typically have more resources at their disposal, which further marginalizes low-resourced students who don't receive high scores. If assessments are important in understanding individual learning gaps, recording the progression of students' understanding of concepts, and identifying individual learning needs, then a game such as this virtual educaitonal escape room would be an excellent alternative.

• In Physics Playground, students are incentivized by solving games at different levels or completing various tasks. This Incentive System can be modeled in the virtual escape room environment. Players can be incentivized after completing games or given recognitions such as high scoreboards, badges, unlocking character assets, or other perks outside of the game, like a dress-down day at school, extra recess, or pizza parties.

• These types of stealth assessments provide instant feedback versus traditional tools like paper comments. Receiving immediate feedback is important in learning, and the closer the feedback is to the learning activity, the better the learning outcome. Additionally, positive reinforcement is another important learning dimension, and it can also be given immediately in this structure (Markovic).

• Physics Playground also included a Competency Model and Q-Matrix that helped align the game with the course rubric and curriculum. My virtual escape room game would model these components as questions would stem from core mathematic principles and definitions learned in class. In a cumulative assessment, there may be questions that cover a semester's worth of math concepts. The accuracy of answering these questions would play into the overall assessment score. It can be argued that since the game requires successful answers to make progress, there may not be opportunities for players to provide incorrect answers as one could do on an exam. Options to address this may involve revealing the answer after a certain number of failed attempts or after the time reaches a certain point to keep the student moving or allowing incorrect answers to be accepted that do not influence future gameplay. For example, a student could input a wrong answer and the prompt states the answer is incorrect but still allows the student to proceed to the next question. Additionally, the prompt could provide the correct answer providing instant feedback.

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​Brian Gravel's Critical Relationality experience explored making to solve problems could be an aspect of the puzzle designs (Gravel, 2021). Gravel posits that our relational perspectives on making shape our thinking about motivation and engagement.

• As previously mentioned, a feature of this game could be allowing students to create their own escape room themes based on self-interests. They would use a pre-fabricated template and select categories of questions that an educator may have already provided.

• As for educators designing these escape rooms, relational experiences could help motivate them to create exciting rooms with appropriate challenges. They can intersect their personal interests or course themes into the game design as a way to stay motivated themselves.

• To incorporate the making or tinkering component, puzzle questions could ask players about how they would design a project or device that addresses the problem and leave the response as an open-ended answer. The answer could draw from information in the game or from personal interests. For example, if the clue was about pirates, the problem could ask, "How does the pirate move the barrels of rum from one boat to his boat?" Then, it would ask the player to describe a gadet or a sketch of a solution.

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Other theories of motivation I incorporated in my game design include:

• Wise Interventions: Clues apply some level of wise interventions by using nouns over verbs and personalizing the situations for the players. There are also features described above that could prompt the players to self-reflect on their experiences while playing. If educators use this game over the course of a semester, they could potentially apply wise interventions to change their students' behaviors and feelings about the subject. Walton shares an example of using wise interventions to make science personally relevant for students to increase their engagement (Walton, 76).

• Self-regulation: Each puzzle has at least 2 hints that players can use at any time. Features built into the game may limit the number of hints a player can use, however, there is little discretion on when and how to use them. This would require a lot of self-regulation during gameplay. Some players may be inclined to save them for the puzzles at the end, so they may refuse to use them when they get to a difficult puzzle near the beginning costly them precious time. Some players may use them all right away, especially if they are disengaged with the activity. Others may find loopholes in the system, such as using them right away before even reading or attempting an answer just to save time. These factors may contribute to future improvements in game design.

• Protege Effect: The educator who designed the room acts as a mentor to the players playing the game who are the proteges. Educators would empathize with the players, creating a bond between the two. Another way to exploit this theory is pairing players with mentors, such as students in the same class. Mentors would help coach mentees on how to complete the game with the best score and, in so doing, would learn how to play the game better themselves, exemplifying the Protege Effect.

• Fanfiction: Since the game is immersive and the storylines and narratives can feel real, players may feel a sense of fanfiction at play, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Since players are given roles in the game, some players may become these characters to fully immerse themselves in gameplay. Additionally, many of the storylines do contain facts so it makes it more challenging to distinguish these facts from fiction.

• Stereotype Threat: It's important to think about how games influence people of different backgrounds. Since many of the themes cover a variety of areas and topics, educators and designers need to think about the players who interact with these games and adjust or censor content appropriately. Also, since many storylines could depict historical events, additional auditing may be required to ensure insensitive materials are removed from the game content. Stereotype Threats could play a role in how players approach the game. Special attention will be necessary for creating diverse teams, ensuring characters and roles are diverse, and whether any part of the assessment targets or creates biases against marginalized individuals. For example, there may be references to activities that only a certain group of people know about, such as Polo, Golf, or Fine Dining, or a player plays as a specific character with negative stereotypes. Finally, a benefit of conducting a stealth assessment versus a traditional paper-based exam is combating stereotype threats. Marginalized individuals are more likely to feel test anxiety, sometimes strengthened by test result demographics. Conducting a stealth assessment could reduce this potential factor (Steele, 1999).

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Other bodies of work that not related to motivation:

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn (CAST). I have used UDL Guidelines in my professional work and in many classes at HGSE. An essential aspect of UDL is providing many options for learners to address specific learning needs. UDL not only increases learning accessibility, but can be a tool to provide learning experiences to those who struggle with other forms of teaching mediums. In a digitized environment, educators have access to more options than in a traditional classroom setting. Using technologies like screen readers, auditory feedback, and multiple input modalities, learners can interact with the content in a variety of different ways. This variety of tools helps support learners and can address specific learning challenges while reducing barriers to learning. For instance, students with learning dis/abilities can focus on learning instead of factors surrounding their learning environments like miscommunication, inability to visualize content, or other inhibiting factors. A student with a vision impairment could utilize an image description on-screen during the game, a tool that is not available in a traditional textbook in the classroom. In these digital escape rooms, educators can provide these supports so that almost everyone can take them.

• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions (CASEL). Since educators are empowered to design their own escape rooms, they can focus on these intangible aspects of learning development that are more difficult to track in traditional classroom settings. For example, using tools like eye-tracking, facial tracking, video recording, and audio recording, educators now have access to more data than ever on their students' emotional well-being. Combining this information with Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help identify students who struggle with emotional interactions or interactions with peers. Educators also have the ability to design prompts throughout the assessment to check on their students' well-being like "How are you feeling so far about this game?" or "How do you think the character feels about the issue?" These additional insights could help highlight important gaps in students' learning profiles. Finally, in team games, the educator can watch the interactions play out live without distracting the rest of the class. In this stealth assessment tool - viewing the students' cameras while playing the game - the educator can focus on aspects like collaboration and communication, which can be important as they tackle these complex challenges together.