Computer Game

Creating Educational Technologies

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Week 11

Week 12

Computer Game

20% Contribution to your course grade

  • 5% Originality (uniqueness of concept)

  • 5% Creativity (implementation and innovation in mechanics)

  • 5% Clarity of Purpose (clear learning objectives merged with gameplay)

  • 5% Complexity of learning (depth of learning objectives)

Portfolio item due Friday 9am Week 6

  1. Your second assignment is to develop an educational computer game. Examples of Educational Computer Games will be provided, but you must use the Twine tool to create your game, and choose the educational approach you feel best enables you to meet the assessment criteria. Your Twine game should have a minimum of 20 decisions.

You will be expected to:

  1. Develop an original educational computer game - the originality most likely coming from what and how you teach students using the computer game;

  2. Show creativity in using the Twine tool. While you are not expected to use complex programming, you should explore the tool and how some of the more complex elements can enhance your educational game;

  3. Develop a concept or skill in an engaging way; and

  4. Teach to a deep level, complex understanding of the concepts or skills students learn.

The tool you will be using to create your game is Twine twinery.org and while there are installable versions, you can also use it online.

Twine lets you create interactive text based adventures or stories, similar to choose your own adventure books and the text based computer games of the 1980's.

The tool is very simple to use and learn at the level expected, but the focus of your task is not just learning how to use this tool, it is in coming up with an original idea for an educational game, creating a complex and engaging interactive game that can be used to teach students, and the more complex and deep this learning, the better.

There are many examples and tutorials on the Twine website, but remember, you are creating a game not just an interactive story (though that will be what your game is based on). Your game should draw upon the theory of play discussed in Week 4, the concept of Serious Play discussed in Week 5, and the Game Making techniques explored in Week 6 (though these will expand upon your work with Twine into other genres of games and the tools available, i.e. everything you need to complete the assignment will be available from Week 4 and 5, the tutorials and examples on the Twine website, and the discussions held in tutorials and online.

To reiterate, your game does not need to go beyond the choose your own adventure genre, but within this genre there are opportunities to include game elements, this is what you need to explore and use these elements to teach concepts in engaging and effective ways.

You may submit a HTML file of your Twine (choose "Save to File" and you may need to compress (Zip) your file before submitting) or provide a link to an accessible online Twine game (you will need to 'host' this and please check using another computer that it is publicly accessible). You will not be submitting anything other than your game, so it must stand alone in demonstrating how you have met the criteria for assessment (hint, do not hide away the best elements that demonstrate the criteria in obscure parts of the game that may not be explored by your assessor). Note also that any images, video, sounds, etc. must be accessed from the web, either already online using a link to the file, or files you have placed and shared on the web, e.g. in dropbox or google drive - but such files must be accessible, it is a very good idea to try out your game with friends to see if they can play it on their computers.

Twine Website

Twine Online

Twine Guide and another more simple Guide

Guide to writing Choose Your Own Adventure style games

Lyomio_Sirja (1).pdf
A-Twine-Cheat-Sheet.pdf