Exploratory Digital Games for Advanced Skills: Theory and Application

Based on Cognitive Flexibility Theory, this chapter presents a framework for the conception, design, and development of a knowledge network that can be used in exploratory instructional digital games. The instructional structure consists of a set of nodes, each associated with a specific level of conceptual restructuring and a set of resources, both perceptual and physical, that can help the learner/player achieve resolution. The resulting conflict field is used to determine the game structure. Distributed and embodied cognition research is used to link instructional objectives with available game resources at the task level. As a result a better alignment is obtained between the instructional objectives and the game core mechanics. The application of the framework is then illustrated by using it to outline the design process of a game to learn computer programming.