Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in thepotential of computer games to function as innovativeeducational tools. However, there is very little evidence ofgames fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process ofmerging the disparate goals of education and games designappears problematic, and there are currently no practicalguidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In thispaper, we describe the successful, empirically validatedteaching methods developed by behavioural psychologistsand point out how they are uniquely suited to takeadvantage of the benefits that games offer to education. Weconclude by proposing some practical steps for designingeducational games, based on the techniques of AppliedBehaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can bothfocus educational games designers on the features of gamesthat are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce asuccessful form of teaching that this audience may not yetbe familiar with.