Thank you for visiting our video showcase on Web Adventures, online educative games in health and science for middle school and high school students. As you can read in the description of the video or see in the video itself, these games (or interactive digital media) have served millions of students over the years but the technology they were originally developed in, Flash, has now been decommissioned. For this very reason, these popular games needs to be redeveloped in new technologies to continue serving millions of more students over the next decade or so . We think this is also a good opportunity to update the contents of the games, add innovative interactive features to them, and expand on them.

Please share your ideas/suggestions about any of these. We also welcome ideas on different research designs on studying the impact of these games on students' psychological and cognitive outcomes as well as issues related to science education policy and use of technology to teach science. 

Please also share ideas about raising funds to redevelop these games as we are actively seeking for federal and foundation funding to support the work. 

The Web Adventures games are of interest to students with health and science content as the goal.  They do need to continue and be redeveloped because of the high  demand Dr. Ekmekci stated.

The funding for redeveloping these games is vital to their existence...we're looking for ideas about potential funding sources.

See our recent brochure for Web Adventures

It's certainly a valuable goal to support educators who have come to rely on these games over the years, however, as you note, they may be due for a redesign. The Learning Sciences community has generated a LOT of empirical research on how to build powerful learning games since these games were first developed. So I'm curious if your team (or perhaps previous research teams) has done any work evaluating the learning or career interest impact of these games. Or, has your team looked at who is using these games and how they are using these games?

Hi Adem!  I enjoyed learning more about these games.  I do hope they get redeveloped.  Thank you for sharing your video!

 Enjoyed the video! I really like the project. Are there any plans to make the games for more inclusive by utilizing a cultural competency lens?

This is really interesting. I wonder if you have any data about how the existing games worked across diverse populations? That'd certainly help with any re-design efforts. 

Unfortunately no, we do not have that information from previous data. However, it will definitely be one of the components of the future studies. We also plan to take an Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) in the development of Web Adventures in new technologies. DBIR will allow us to hear directly from the field (teachers and students) in the design phase of the games.

Thank you for sharing your work.

Out of curiosity, over what period of time were these original six games developed?

Similarly to Joshua D & Nathan, I'm curious about what you've learned about the efficacy of the existing games. It sounds like you don't have information disaggregated across various demographics, but I wonder if you have some data about how well they worked, and what you measured for when determining how well they worked?

Along a similar line, what did not work? Were there any common threads across the games that seemed counter-intuitive for players and might be redesigned, or other difficulties that could be addressed in a redesign/redevelopment?

Finally, you mentioned adding cultural elements to the games/platform. What might that look like? I'm sure there is lots of design yet to do, but do you have any first ideas of what could be effective in that realm?

Thanks for the great questions Josh.

Re: efficacy of the games: Briefly, use of Web Adventures resulted in

• more availing attitudes for students regarding prescription drug abuse.
• improved science possible selves for students
• improved science knowledge scores and science attitudes

In one study (Monroy et al., 2011), incorporation of a few of the games in a virtual world (Whyville) resulted in building a community of learners and more engagement by students. This by itself suggests us to include more interactive features (student-to-student and teacher-to-student) within the games themselves.

Re: disaggregated analysis:  Actually, a few studies (e.g., Bowling et al., 2013; Klisch et al., 2011) did look at the learning and attitude outcomes by gender and did not find significant differences between males and females (i.e., equal impact).

Re: what did not work: Mostly issued related to software versions, compatibility, and availability of platforms are the most problematic things. Another finding was that students preferred less text and often skipped through longer text areas. This suggests reading passages needs to be revised to make them more concise.  

RE: cultural relevancy: Including characters from diverse backgrounds (drawing from the role-modeling and affinity groups literature) and presenting the cases or situations within diverse cultural contexts (drawing from culturally responsive teaching/pedagogy).

We are open to other ideas, too. Please share with us what you know about what works/does not work regarding games in education. What to pay attention when considering diverse backgrounds? Or other suggestions??