Studies of educational games often treat them as "black boxes" (Black and Wiliam in Phi Delta Kappan 80: 139-48, 1998; Buckley et al. in Int J LearnTechnol 5:166-190, 2010; Buckley et al. in J Sci Educ Technol 13: 23-41, 2010) and measure their effectiveness by exposing a treatment group of students to the game and comparing their…

Research on the use of digital games suggests they can enhance students' learning; however, teachers often play an important role in mediating gameplay and a game's educational goals. The purpose of the study was to investigate implementation approaches of nine biology teachers using an immersive digital game in their science classes, focusing on…

Games can be rich environments for learning and can elicit evidence of students' conceptual understanding and inquiry processes. Illuminating students' content-specific gameplay decisions, or methods of completing game tasks related to a certain domain, requires a context that is open-ended enough for students to make choices that demonstrate…