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Max Neu

Building on several years of research about games in classroom teaching, we published in 2022 our serious game EZRA, which is highly optimized for classroom usage. The game won the German Computergames Prize as well as several Children's Media Prizes. During an evaluation of the games deployment into classroom teaching we could observe both, proof for our claim of boosting students motivation as well as the opposite effect. Especially identifying those factors, that led to a loss of motivation in students who encountered the classroom setting in which the game was used, were very enlightening for our team. I would love to share those findings, since they can be very useful for future development of classroom games. Even more, some could even tap in to (not only new) discussions on how realistic a broad usage of games in classroom can be.

Attendee Benefits

I want to provide attendees with our evaluations findings. I would give a brief summary of the results of our previous studies, based on which we produced and optimized our game EZRA. Then want to move on, to the Evaluation of the Classroom usage of the finished game. Here I want to share and discuss a variety of factors we could identify as significant for amplifying or diminishing learners motivation. Special attention shall be given to the second one, the decrese in students motivation towards the learning subject, triggered by utilizing the game. I guess anyone who produces games for more formalized or formal educational settings or is an educator using games in formal settings will be able to use these findings to enhance their next game production/ their teaching and better choose when to use a game, which to select and how to communicate around it.