Taking Educational Games Seriously: Using the RETAIN Model to Design Endogenous Fantasy into Standalone Educational Games
ARTICLE
Glenda A. Gunter, Robert F. Kenny, Erik H. Vick
Educational Technology Research and Development Volume 56, Number 5, ISSN 1042-1629
Abstract
We are witnessing a mad rush to pour educational content into games in an ad hoc manner in hopes that player/learners are motivated simply because the content is housed inside a game. A failure to base educational game design on well-established learning and instructional theories increases the risk of the game failing to meet its intended educational goals, and yielding students who are entertained but who have not acquired any academic skills or knowledge. Our review of standalone educational games has shown that they are not always based on sound educational principles and theories. We contend that, if academic learning is to take place, a new design paradigm must be developed. This article discusses the RETAIN design and evaluation model for educational games that was developed to aide in the evaluation of how well academic content is endogenously immersed and embedded within the game's fantasy and story context, promoters transfer of knowledge, and encourages repetitive usage to that content becomes available for use in an automatic way.
Citation
Gunter, G.A., Kenny, R.F. & Vick, E.H. (2008). Taking Educational Games Seriously: Using the RETAIN Model to Design Endogenous Fantasy into Standalone Educational Games. Educational Technology Research and Development, 56(5), 511-537. Retrieved August 13, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/166544/.
![](https://editlib-media.s3.amazonaws.com/sources/eric.png)
ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.
Copyright for this record is held by the content creator. For more details see ERIC's copyright policy.
Keywords
Cited By
View References & Citations Map-
Learning to play games or playing games to learn? A health education case study with Soweto teenagers
Alan Amory & Alan Amory
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology Vol. 26, No. 6 (Jan 01, 2010)
-
Situated Learning based on Virtual Environment for improving Disaster Risk Reduction
Jaime Caroca, Mario Bruno & Roberto Aldunate
Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society Vol. 12, No. 4 (Sep 27, 2016)
-
An Evaluation of Social Change Games as viewed through the RETAIN model
Laurie O Campbell & Glenda Gunter, University of Central Florida, United States
Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2017 (Mar 05, 2017) pp. 2552–2556
-
Utilizing the Retain Model to Evaluate Mobile Learning Applications
Laurie O. Campbell & Glenda Gunter, University of Central Florida, United States; Junia Braga, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, Brazil
Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2015 (Mar 02, 2015) pp. 732–736
-
Educational Video Game Design to Promote Learning and Innovation Skills: Instructional Ideas for Educators
Jesús Trespalacios, New Mexico State University, United States
Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2012 (Mar 05, 2012) pp. 2640–2645
-
Usability and Playability Heuristics for Evaluation of an Instructional Game
Jean Lee Tan, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Rebecca P Ang & Vivien S Huan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2010 (Oct 18, 2010) pp. 363–373
These links are based on references which have been extracted automatically and may have some errors. If you see a mistake, please contact info@learntechlib.org.