Bringing Evolution to a Technological Generation: A Case Study with the Video Game SPORE (RESEARCH ON Learning) (Report‪)‬

Board games have been brought into the classroom for years (e.g., War) to help student engagement with material, and some colleges have built a reputation around using non-video games as classroom pedagogy. Barnard College Professor Mark Carnes has successfully developed the "Reacting to the Past" series (http:// www.barnard.edu/reacting/) since 1996. This pedagogy has been spreading through many institutions with rave reviews (Prince, 2005; Houle, 2006; Higbee, 2008). But today's generation is more comfortable and relaxed with technologies like video, MP3, and video games (Tapscott, 1998, 2009; Raines, 2002; Pardue & Morgan, 2008). Video games have been mainstream in the United States since the 1970s with the debut of Atari's Pong (Kent, 2001); the Entertainment Software Association's "2009 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry" shows that 68% of American households play computer and video games, and 63% of parents feel that video games are a positive part of children's lives. Most video games are designed and marketed for home entertainment use, not academia. LeapFrog Enterprises brought educational games into the home in 1995 (http:// www.leapfrog.com), but the bridge into secondary- and college-level gaming has been minimal. Some academics have been intrigued to use "edutainment" options like SimCity, Civilization, and Oregon Trail (Rice, 2007; Rice & Wilson, 1999; Squire, 2003, 2005), but science simulations, especially for evolution, have not been designed for the entertainment realm. John Conway's Game of Life (http:// www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/) and Jeffrey Ventrella and Brian Dodd's Darwin Pond (http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/darwin.html) are science simulations, not entertainment.