Invoking Higher Orders of Thinking in Serious Educational Games

Serious Educational Games (SEG) are an increasing segment of K-18 instructional resources and have made headway into human resource and professional development training. The difficulty of creating complex adaptable learning activities can constrain SEG developers. Current SEGs tend to be narrow in content or limited in the types of learning assessed, i.e. rote practice and objective learning. SimSYS is a content agnostic game platform that addresses the need for an easily adaptable SEG that explicitly associates learning objectives with game play. In this paper, we describe the creation of a game challenge / assessment tool that encourages higher orders of thinking requiring analysis and judgment through an interactive sandbox.