Week 3 (2/21 – 2/27)
Reflections:
I had somewhat of a harder time figuring out how Bloom's Taxonomy terms related to game development initially. It didn't click that they were moreso leading to guidelines to the lessons that would be taught by a hypothetical educational time
When choosing from the potential targeted behaviors list, we went with the sleep schedule targeted behavior, which was very relevant to me in particular. With the individual one, I went with time management, but I think this is an aspect of it
Getting a proper night of sleep would help with managing time in the day, and I personally think it could be interesting to explore a game that involves elements of both time management and having a sleep schedule
HW4:
Time management - how to organize yourself and your time, including fun time
Part 1. Learning Needs:
Conduct online background research to identify what people need to learn to increase their awareness with respect to this topic. Then, write a paragraph with appropriate citations towards answering the question: What do people need to learn to increase awareness towards taking action to change their behavior? Cite sources for good content that could be the basis for and educational game's learning content on this topic.
No matter the age or line of work, everyone has to deal with a daily schedule filled with activities, some they want to do and some they have no desire for but need, and often times people have a hard time decided where to fit in all the activities they have to do or want to do. Learning about how to better manage the precious time in any given day is an important topic with many benefits. Knowing about how to properly manage time has a myriad of benefits like higher quality output and more structure, which in terms leaves more time to spend performing off schedule activities. People often have a concept of certain activities being a "waste of time" that could be spent doing something more generally seen to be productive. Time management, much like many other life skills and values, can be instilled into people through more engaging means than something akin to a simple lecture. The articles at learningworksforkids.com shows off an example of a kid implicitly learning about time management skills just through playing a video game they thought was fun. This type of learning is perfect because to the player, they would never think of the game as a learning time and simply think of it as a fun game to play, but it also helps in an essential life skill just through the intrinsic game design.
https://www.freshbooks.com/hub/productivity/importance-of-time-management
https://learningworksforkids.com/2012/05/improving-time-management-with-video-games/
Part 2. Existing Games:
Many games have gameplay elements that revolve around doing objectives around an in game timer or having a limited amount of time to perform a set number of actions.
Pikmin 1 - requires collecting a set number of key items within a limited in game time of 30 days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikmin
Persona - There are a set number of activities that can be performed on each day of the in game calendar, and a big element of the game is optimizing your time to get the maximum amount of benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(series) (Links to an external site.)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - The game is centered all around completing as many tasks as possible within the in game three day limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask
Games such as these have a heavy emphasis on optimizing limited time, finding the most efficient way to proceed under stricter conditions than many other games. One's first time around may have them struggling with managing their time efficiently, but the more the player discovers the mechanics and ways to work around them and even ways to shave off time and make progress in a quicker fashion.
Part 3. The Gaps:
While there are a number of games that have time management elements in them, they often don't do so with the express intention of being a learning tool. I think this is good, as it does the job of being unintentionally helpful while its main goal is just being enjoyable and fun, but a way a game could do this while being more directly educational would be through feedback. In games that have time management aspects, messing up at moments will simply have the game either penalize you in some way or just say to try again. Many do not directly tell the player what areas they could improve on, and I think that could be a useful tool that further incentivizes improvement.