The Globe and Mail

The name of the game is First Poochie Sniffer. When it is ready to be tested, it will offer the students who try it out the chance to experience life as a dog.

“We want to know whether we can show a different kind of sense, like smell, and have someone experience a dog’s perspective that is completely smell-driven,” says York University’s Jennifer Jenson, one of a growing number of researchers who are exploring the instructional power of computer and video games designed specifically for the classroom.

She and her colleagues suspect digital games can engage students and help them learn about topics as diverse as genetics, Baroque music, contagious diseases and what it would be like to have a powerful nose. They want to find the formula, a balance between fun and learning, that could make digital games an effective teaching tool.

First Poochie Sniffer, which she is developing with Nicholas Taylor at Toronto’s York and Suzanne de Castell at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, is not ready for the classroom. But Dr. Jenson is testing another game, one that helps children develop the analytical skills to describe how two objects – such as an orange and a banana – are the same, and how they differ. The elementary-school students who play the game visit a virtual grocery story, a school, a town or an ocean. Dr. Jenson wants to know if it is a more effective teaching tool than having students do the same kind of exercises with pencils and paper.

Another game, called Epidemic, is aimed at teenagers, and designed to help them learn about how infectious diseases are spread. An adventure game set in Europe in 1704 offers children an introduction to Baroque music. Players have to help obtain a supply of precious Arundo donax, a plant used to make reeds for instruments, that grows only in France. Along the way they learn about the elements of a Baroque orchestra, musical notation and composers.

“Our take on this is that video games give you an environment to ‘play’ and do and experience things you haven’t before. We see games as experimental places where we can focus not just on cognitive skills but also focus on the education of the person,” says Dr. Jenson, who is part of GRAND, a federally funded research network that studies the application of digital media in a variety of settings, including the classroom.

It is still very early in the evolution of educational computer games, says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Eric Klopfer. He is testing a new smartphone game designed to help high-school students understand genetics. Beetle Breeders is meant to be played before and after school, not to take up classroom time, he says. It builds on what the students had been taught – in Dr. Klopfer’s view, games would never replace a teacher.

Dr. Jenson is working with the University of British Columbia’s Cristina Conati on a project to identify the components of successful instructional game design and come up with guidelines for developers. While research shows that educational computer games engage and motivate students, Dr Conati says there is not solid evidence that they are effective.

“They [students] learn strategies to play it well, they have fun, they might learn here or there, but not to the extent the designers might have hoped,” she says.

Popular computer and video games are designed to be enticing and engrossing. In educational games, it is difficult to find the right balance between fun and learning, Dr. Conati says.

“If we manage to find that formula,” he says, “it has the potential to really change education and bring more fun into it.”