Abstract—Educational games are gaining recognition and
popularity as a novel teaching technology in the recent decade.
However, most existing studies on its design either fail to
examine game mechanics through the lens of pedagogical
theories or address the design variation in games integrating
different fields of study. This paper aims to resolve the
deficiencies in prior research and shed light on the heuristic of
creating effective educational games through a structured,
pragmatic, and multidimensional design framework. An
empirical study is conducted on 50 representative games
stratified based on 5 categories of academic disciplines. A total
of 25 game mechanics that promote learning outcomes are
identified and analyzed in relation to three schools of learning
theories—behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Finally,
the findings in game mechanics, academic disciplines, and
learning theories are synthesized to derive a pedagogy-based
framework with the intent to help game designers optimize
learning efficiency in their games and create a better learning
experience for players.
Index Terms—Game-based learning, educational game, game
design, pedagogy.
Yunhao Huo is with Bishop O’Dowd High School, Oakland, CA 94605
USA (e-mail: howardhuousa@gmail.com).
Cite: Yunhao Huo, "A Pedagogy-Based Framework for Optimizing Learning Efficiency across Multiple Disciplines in Educational Games," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 9, no. 10, pp. 704-709, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).