Operation ARIES!: A Serious Game for Teaching Scientific Inquiry

There is a long history of science fiction novels and movies that feature aliens from other worlds conquering our planet, either overtly as in The War of the Worlds, or covertly as in The Arrival. Aliens have also infiltrated video games, starting with Space Invaders, and more recently with Aliens vs. Predator. Extraterrestrials have also appeared in educational games and related learning experiences. For example, in Alien Games, girls and boys create a video game within an alien theme teaching principles of outer space (Heeter, Egidio, Mishra, Winn, & Caywood, 2007). Indeed, the idea of aliens taking over Earth is hardly a new idea. Aliens have recently made their appearance in a serious game called Operation ARIES! In this game, players learn how to critically evaluate research that they encounter in various media, such as the Web, TV, magazines and newspapers. ARIES is an acronym for Acquiring Research Investigative and Evaluative Skills. The game focuses on teaching critical thinking and scientific reasoning within scientific inquiry (the ―how‖ of science). In particular, it teaches how to critically evaluate aspects of scientific investigations (e.g., the need for control groups, adequate samples of observations, operational definitions, etc.) and how to ask appropriate questions in order to uncover problems with design or interpretation. Scientific inquiry is crucial because it comprises the necessary steps of ―science as process,‖ the steps that scientists follow in establishing and critiquing causal claims (NSES, 1996). Scientific inquiry is a crucial aspect of being an informed citizen living in the ―information age‖. The public is constantly being exposed to causal claims made by scientists, advertisers, coworkers, friends, and the press via a variety of media (blogs, TV, Web, print, word of mouth). Of course, some of the claims have relatively solid scientific evidence for support, whereas others do not. In some cases, the research is well executed, but the interpretation or Running Head: OPERATION ARIES! 3 conclusion drawn by the press is inappropriate, as in the case of a headline that makes a causal claim (―Wine Lowers Heart Attack Risk in Women‖) based on a correlational design which does not support a cause-effect interpretation In other cases, a claim is unfounded because the design of the study itself is flawed. For example, in one ―experiment‖ aired on American TV, reporters secretly recorded a carload of teenage drivers. The footage shows them carelessly driving through stop signs while laughing and joking …