Common Narrative in Educational Video Games: A Design of Games to Teach Circuits

Educational games have found use in the classroom environment, and research suggests that well-designed games have motivational and educational benefits. But often games are individually crafted to fill a need in a specific assignment with no relation to other parts of the course or any other games used to assist teaching in the course. We are examining the question of whether or not educational content in a game tied more closely together through a common narrative is beneficial to student motivation to complete the educational content. To investigate this, we have developed a game with a common narrative to tie together a set of assignments in a circuitry course to then compare to the same set of assignments spread across three games containing different narratives.