PROJECTIVE REPLAY ANALYSIS: A REFLECTIVE APPROACH FOR ALIGNING EDUCATIONAL GAMES TO THEIR GOALS ERIK HARPSTEAD Human-Computer Interaction Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213
[email protected] CMU-HCII-17-107 August 2017 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy COMMITTEE: Vincent Aleven, HCII, Carnegie Mellon University, Chair Jodi Forlizzi, HCII, Carnegie Mellon University Jessica Hammer, HCII / ETC, Carnegie Mellon University Sharon Carver, Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University Jesse Schell, ETC, Carnegie Mellon University The research reported here was supported, in whole or in part, by the DARPA ENGAGE research program under ONR Contract Number N00014-12-C-0284 and by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305B090023 to Carnegie Mellon University. All opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the sponsoring agencies. Copyright © 2017 Erik Harpstead Keywords: Replay Analysis, Educational Game Design, Alignment For my Grandfather Dale and my Nephew Durinn ABSTRACT Educational games have become an established paradigm of instructional practice; however, there is still much to be learned about how to design games to be the most beneficial for learners. An important consideration when designing an educational game is whether there is good alignment between its content goals and the instructional behaviors it makes in order to reinforce those goals. Existing methods for measuring alignment are labor intensive and use complex auditing procedures, making it difficult to define and evaluate this alignment in order to guide the educational game design process.