Designing an Educational Game with Customized Scaffolds for Learning Physics

Digital games have become a popular source of entertainment. The main reason that players continue to play video games is that the game designers use scaffolding to bridge the gap between a player´s current skills and those needed to be successful at the next level. Several mainstream digital games have the flexibility to become promising game-based learning environments, in which scaffolding could play a crucial role to improve the learning experience. This study examines the effectiveness of providing instructors with the opportunity to tailor a digital game in order to meet their personal teaching goals. The built-in game features in Crayon Physics Deluxe are blended with instructor-designed scaffolding to see whether such features can assist learning without impeding creativity. A total of 126 participants were divided into four groups. In three of the groups, Crayon Physics Deluxe was used with varied scaffolding conditions: demonstration scaffolding, non-scaffolding, and marking critical features scaffolding. The fourth group did not play the game. Learning outcomes were examined in terms of physics knowledge acquisition (in the form of concept maps) and creativity performance (in the form of game episode designs). The results show that the marking critical features scaffolding group performed significantly better than the demonstration scaffolding group in both conceptual knowledge acquisition and in the sensitivity dimension of design creativity. The group with demonstration scaffolding scored higher in the flexibility dimension of creativity when designing their own game episodes. These findings suggest that proper scaffolding does facilitate learning, and different learning purposes require various designs of scaffoldings.