Board Game Designs from EDTEC 670
Posted 2:19 PM by One Trick Pony
My 670 class is a particularly creative bunch this year. As their first foray into game design, they developed Board Games, a task that at first seems simple. As they burrow more deeply into the design process they come to see that the tradeoffs between fidelity and simplicity and between educational impact and fun are interestingly complex. I was particularly impressed by:

• Paleotopia, a game based around a dinosaur dig site;
  
• Formula Trap, which brings area and perimeter to life;
  
• Culture Savvy, which makes learning Hofstede's Five Cultural Dimensions fun;
  
• Parse Game, which covers sentence parsing for linguistics students;
  
• Feed Your Face, a nutrition game; and
  
• Give & Take, a game of math facts.
  

I frequently get email from people who stumble on these designs and want to buy a copy of the actual games. I think many of them are better designed than a lot of commercial games labeled "educational".