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Observing users interacting with a learning game, often referred to as playtesting, is a critical component of usability testing. Unfortunately, this practice is expensive, requiring users and researchers to be in the same place at the same time as the participants. With Virtual Reality, this difficulty is amplified due to the experience being hidden from researcher view by default, and the extra complexity of setting up casting to an external monitor, especially with groups. In this paper we develop and utilize a replay-based approach to usability testing that relieves these concerns. The approach uses a low-bandwidth stream of telemetry signals that are generated by the original play session. These signals are then reconstructed into a full representation of the original experience at a different time or place and leveraged to identify usability issues. Once the issues have been discovered, automated processes are developed to computationally identify their presence and severity in arbitrarily large public audiences. This work contributes a demonstrated use of replay for Virtual Reality usability research, and a novel use of replay combined with educational data mining to develop an automated process for studying large audiences at low cost. 

This research considers the impact of a digital science game that provides immersive experiences in which participants take on the role of a scientist and learn through active engagement with simulated science environments and tools. Wake: Tales from the Aqualab is an immersive web-based middle school science game designed to teach science practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation in aquatic ecosystems. This paper describes findings from a study of approximately 250 middle school students who used a beta version of the game over two weeks. A pre-post survey of affective measures found significant gains in student science identity, self-efficacy, and interest. Classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers supported these findings, suggesting that the immersive qualities of the game helped students think of themselves as scientists and engage in authentic science practices, contributing to shifts in students’ attitudes and beliefs about science. 

As digital games and simulations continue to see use in both formal and informal learning contexts, it becomes increasingly important to understand the goals, motivations, and interests of the learners using them. Recently, there has been increased interest in identifying the different engagement profiles of learners playing games, descriptions of groups of learners’ tendencies and preferences when playing digital games. These engagement profiles represent a powerful tool for designers looking to create personalized and adaptive learning environments. In this work, we explore two aspects of these engagement profiles. First, we explore the different profiles of engagement in a large sample of elementary and middle school learners playing the history game Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case (2019) in a variety of contexts, using the data from a self-report survey. Second, we explore the effect that minor game dialogue changes had on learners’ perceptions of different game elements, such as character likeability and humor, as well as personal preferences, such as enjoyment of history. These findings highlight opportunities for personalized and adaptive game design that leverage players’ goals and motivations. 

In this work-in-progress poster, we will present how a team including game designers, learning scientists,and assessment scientists collaborated on an online adventure game, Aqualab, with the goal of creating a comprehensive long-format game that can be used across multiple classroom sessions to support development science inquiry practices as well as assess different learning pathways within the game. In this work-in-progress poster, we discuss how the team approached design and development of the game to ensure validity of the game, and how we are planning to further investigate validity evidence of the gameas a whole. 

In this work-in-progress poster, we will present how a team including game designers, learning scientists, and assessment scientists collaborated on an online adventure game, Aqualab, with the goal of creating a comprehensive long-format game that can be used across multiple classroom sessions to support development science inquiry practices as well as assess different learning pathways within the game. In this work-in-progress poster, we discuss how the team approached design and development of the game to ensure validity of the game, and how we are planning to further investigate validity evidence of the game as a whole. 

Learning progressions allow researchers to describe key milestones along a pathway of thinking about a topic or practice that ranges from beginner to advanced. For learning related to science practices, some progressions can be abstracted from specific content; others are connected to specific science understandings. This research centers on the design of a middle school science game to support learning of science practices through simulated immersive experiences in which students engage in science practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation. This work-in-progress paper describes the application of current research on learning progressions to the design of the game interface and interactions for Aqualab, a game to teach middle school science practices related to aquatic ecosystems.