Learning science socially through game creation

A case study of the Newtoon prototype

August 2007
Authors: Briony Greenhill, Jessica Pykett, Tim Rudd
Contributors: Ed Burton, Hans Daanen, Graham Hopkins, Clara Lemon

The full version of this report is available to download in pdf format - see box below. On this page you'll find the report's introduction and executive summary.

Introduction

Newtoon is a mobile phone and web activity which aims to embed physics learning in mobile game creation and play. It enables young people to create microgames via a web interface on a PC in a 2D world consisting of balls and springs. The games can be trialled and edited on the PC, and various physics principles regulating the movement of objects can be manipulated via the interface. Each game lasts only a few seconds, during which students need to figure out how to play the game. A number of these microgames can be aggregated into ‘gamestacks’, shared with other players and played on a mobile phone. The Newtoon experience allows students to author, play, edit and share fast-paced microgames with game rules based on a set of Newtonian and other physics principles. The idea was submitted to Futurelab’s Call for Ideas programme by digital arts company Soda Creative.

This prototype is an attempt to inspire children to become more science literate and to bridge the gap between learning abstract science ‘concepts’ and actually ‘doing’ science through simulation. More broadly, it is hoped that by actively constructing science-based mobile games, students will be motivated to make use of web applications and mobile phones for the purpose of learning. The evolution of a gaming community has the potential to invoke an interactive and collaborative classroom culture with doing, debating and deliberating science at its heart. This could involve exploring the possibilities of a 21st century science curriculum, in which there is greater emphasis on understanding how science and scientists work in practice, how pupils can relate science to the world around them, and how they can use and apply science to the world around them.

Executive summary

Developing the Newtoon experience started with idea development, literature reviews and teacher consultation, followed by regular concept trials and development with teachers and students. Soda Creative developed the Newtoon software informed by regular user-testing sessions in a secondary school, and Futurelab worked with teachers to design a suitable suite of lessons for the research trials.

Key findings from the trials identified that:

• Newtoon is an excellent tool for consolidating learning: learners with a little prior knowledge in particular showed clear improvements in understanding of key concepts after the trial.
• Newtoon had a striking effect on learner engagement: students of all abilities and genders embraced the experience with enthusiasm. We identified five key drivers behind engagement: authorship; ownership; playful/experimental learning; the social value of the games; and being involved in authentic, real research and development activities.
• Newtoon not only helped learners understand scientific concepts but also helped them experience the scientific design processes and develop their digital literacy. Newtoon presents a challenge to more ‘traditional’, didactic pedagogies. The most effective use requires a more dialogic pedagogy with the teacher facilitating discussion and actively encouraging peer-to-peer transfer of learning.
• Students who used Newtoon at home tended to involve parents and siblings in the process of their learning.
• Some technical limitations prevented many students using the mobile phones and accessing the website from home, although those that did extended their learning through interaction with parents and siblings. Another limitation was that for the trial Newtoon could work only on certain mobile phones and therefore pupils could not harness the full potential of broader collaborative learning offered by transfer of content across different handsets.
• Newtoon’s create-play-edit-share formula shows clear potential to be developed to encompass a wider range of scientific concepts and for it to be integrated into various stages of the curriculum as both an extension and consolidation learning activity. There is also clear potential to broaden the gaming/learning community beyond the bounds of a class, a school, or even a country to harness greater learning potential.

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