Conspiracy Code: A Digital Game-Based American History Course

Jeramy Gatza

Thu., June 11, 11:00–12:30, Profile (2nd floor, East)

Florida Virtual School is pioneering interactive online education with the development of a game-based course designed to teach a full course in high school American history. Through a live demonstration, we will share the instructional design and gaming methods which allow students to master course content while engaged in game play.

Conspiracy Code is the next generation of online education. This course makes new strides in keeping students engaged with content and provides constant and immediate feedback on performance. Results from student focus groups have shown that students are more interested in completing American history in this game format than a traditional course.

• A full credit of high school American history
• Aligned to Florida and national standards
• Integrated, easy-to-use teacher interface
• Discussion-based assessments are embedded through the course; each mission within the game has a culminating written assessment project

The presenter will show a live demonstration of a digital game-based course developed to teach an entire high school American history course. The presenter will demonstrate how the instructional design concepts and educational content were embedded into game play. A look at the teacher monitoring tools and reports will illustrate the teacher’s facilitator role within the game and will illustrate how teacher-graded game-themed assignments help students reach upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. We will also discuss how Caine and Caine’s brain-based learning principles were analyzed and used in the creation of the game, and how student focus testing was conducted to support the application of these principles in the game world. The presenter will discuss the pioneering nature of this development in that it has the potential to create more engagement and student interest leading to a decrease in course completion time. The selection and use of partners for game development and the subsequent methods for maturing the instructional design/game development relationship will also be discussed. The methods for using these partnerships to cohesively create sound educational content, instructional design, and game play opportunities will be shared with the audience. The presenter will show a live demonstration of a digital game based course in a Chat ’n’ Frag session with the opportunity for participants to play the game.