The educational value of the Sol Y Agua digital game into middle school science class

Abstract

This paper focuses on finding the added educational value that the Sol y Agua game provides to science students in the El Paso TX context. Hong et al. (2009) created an evaluation index for assessing the educational value of digital games which includes seven categories: Mentality change, emotional fulfillment, knowledge enhancement, thinking skill development, interpersonal skills, spatial ability development, and bodily coordination. Sol y Agua is an educational digital game developed at the CyberShare Center of Excellence at the University of Texas at El Paso. The game is a role-playing adventure game that focuses on the environmental and water sustainability problems in the El Paso area. The game was created to be part of a lesson plan for middle school science classrooms. Along with practices that include computational thinking skills, the game provides students with opportunities to develop reasoning, simulation, and a better understanding of the soil and water properties as well as their usage within the community. Based on the Evaluation Indices for Assessing Educational Digital Games, a game provides elements that allow players (students) a mentality change, emotional fulfillment, knowledge enhancement, development of thinking skills, and spatial ability. The ultimate goal of the game is for students to design a park for a specific population, children and elder people. To achieve this, the game provides students with the opportunity to identify the different types of soil (desert, mountain) different types of trees, and their water and soil requirements.

Keywords: digital games, assessment, science class, middle school

Received Date: October 11, 2019
Revised Date: November 2, 2019
Accepted Date: November 15, 2019