Towards a Context Agnostic Platform for Design and Assessment of Educational Games

The majority of the games designed for improving, acquiring or transferring knowledge rely heavily on building game mechanics that are grounded deeply in the content or subject matter being taught. There is a growing need for educational practitioners and pedagogical experts to have the ability to easily map learning outcomes by choosing from a pallet of functioning game mechanics without having the need to redesign them from scratch. In this paper, we present the current state of the art in context agnostic design and assessment of educational games, and propose three strategies that educators can take advantage of during the use and delivery of educational games in their classrooms. The proposed strategies pay close attention to integrating different forms of assessment techniques that do not rely on the domain or content area being taught. Additionally, this paper describes in detail how two sets of game mechanics can be used with minimal changes to teach both English and math to middle school students. The design concepts presented have not yet been validated by real participants. In the future, this platform will be validated with both educators and students.