Group #5: Travika Sewrattan, Francia Aguilar, Joshua Isreali, & Pamela Drake

Our group project is a quiz game that teaches players how to research faster and more accurately. The research skills the player will obtain while playing the game will come from the competition of playing rather than being taught by the game itself. We all know that researching can be pretty dull and time consuming. Our ultimate goal is that players will become better at researching out of the desire to win the game/defeat the other participants. Additionally, our secondary goal is to make researching a bit more fun and interesting.

For the game we have proposed, we have created a demo for said game. The game’s rules are as followed: First, all of the players will be split up into two separate groups. After that, players will then navigate to the open-lab website and select the project “The Game of Research”. Then, players will read and comprehend the rules for playing. After which, players will select one of the provided topics and then be led to a related question of the topic. The players will be given time to research using various search engines such as Google, Bing, and Ursala C. Schwerin Library. The group that raises their hand first will be selected to answer the question. If the group answers the question correctly, they will receive one point for the question. These steps will be repeated until all questions have been answered and the group with the highest amount of points will win the game. In the case where neither group is able to provide a correct answer for a certain question, they will be given a hint and then asked to go back research the answer once more.

This is not the first time where a game has been used to indirectly enhance a certain skill of a student. For instance, the article, “How Virtual Games Can Help Struggling Students Learn” written by Allie Bidwell explains how games can help engage students by helping them improve basic cognitive functions and critical thinking. In the article it stated that, “Teachers are almost the entertainers trying to find whatever tool they can to try to engage their kids.” Another valuable aspect of using games in the classroom is the competition and reward mechanisms built into some games, which is one of the main purposes of our research game. Another point Allie makes is that more and more, educators are taking advantage of digital advances to supplement their teaching in the classroom, and are seeing encouraging results.

Much like our game, quiz shows have been used in classrooms before. For example, according to the article, “Kahoot App Brings Urgency of a Quiz Show to the Classroom” by Natasha Singer, the Kahoot App is an online quiz system from Norway which quickly gained popularity here in the states. Similar to our game, the App presents players with a question via using their laptops, tablets or smart phones. Much like our game, these similar devices offer different speeds at which to answer the question. As stated in the article, the digital specialist, Ms. McGaughy says “They think the cellphone is faster. So the competitive kids use the phone.” In the case of our game, this would be equivalent to a student using Google as their search engine because they think it’s faster than the other available research engines. Unlike our game, with this App players are given thirty seconds to answer and earn extra points for answering faster.

In conclusion, we hope that the game we created will provide a fun and interesting experience and also will build useful research skills one might need for a research paper or otherwise. We would like to thank you all for participating in our demo game.