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Students in open-ended educational games have a number of different pathways that they can select to work productively through a learning activity. Educators and system designers may want to know which of these pathways are most effective for engagement, learning, or other desirable outcomes. In this paper, we investigate which prior jobs and factors are associated with higher rates of student quitting behavior in an educational science exploration game. We use a series of Chi squared analyses to identify the jobs with the highest rates of quitting overall, and we calculate logistic regressions within specific jobs to determine the potential factors that lead to students quitting those jobs. Our analysis revealed that for 23 of the 40 jobs examined, having experience in at least one previous job significantly decreased the chances of students quitting the subsequent job, and that completing specific prior jobs reduces quit rates on specific later jobs. In our discussion, we describe the challenges associated with modeling quitting behavior, and how these analyses could be used to better optimize students’ pathways through the game environment. Specially, guiding students through specific sequences of preliminary jobs before tackling more challenging jobs can improve their engagement and reduce dropout rates, thus optimizing their learning pathways. 

This short paper presents a description and analysis of personal and social immersion features in a life science educational videogame for middle school students. The paper defines personal immersion in relation to the player taking on a virtual role and engaging with the game as if they are themselves a part of in-game events. Social immersion comes from situating the player within a virtual community, in which the player and other characters in the world interact based on their virtual roles. The research study involved interviews with 24 students who used the game over a two-week classroom implementation. The study explored student perceptions about immersive elements of the game, and their impact on student self-efficacy, interest, and identity in science. Student responses indicated that they experienced personal immersion through engaging with the game narrative as a virtual scientist and doing science tasks, and social immersion through role-based interactions with other virtual scientists. Students described how their self-efficacy, interest, and identity in science were impacted by personal and social immersive elements of the game. The paper contributes to the literature through an analysis of these specific immersive game mechanics and their impacts on student attitudes. 

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.