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Existing Research

In General

What is the impact of using

SimCity 3000 on a group of school economics students?

Literature positive about student engagement, but less convincing that it leads to better attainment

Gender differences

Very mixed with a number of self-selected groups and conflicts between academic testing and games that have large female audiences.

  • How do they interact with the program?
  • How engaging is the simulation?
  • Does it help them to grasp Economic theory?

Casual Games

Research is immature, but evidence found so far is positive

SimCity

Proven track record in other subjects,

What is SimCity 3000?

but not in Economics

The game is based on the urban planning theories of Jay Forrester. Forrester and includes significant amounts of micro-economic theories.

Other Economics simulations

Positive with some evidence of improved academic performance

Conclusion

Log & Essay

Interface

Engagement

What Economics Concepts did they find in SimCity?

Learning Experience

  • Highly engaged for first 3 days
  • Girls had an emotional connection with their cities
  • Wanted to beat the simulation
  • Interest peaked at a population of 120,000.
  • In future it would be useful to have some challenges for experienced games players to keep them motivated.

Minimal technical frustrations, but 91 icons took some time to learn. A printed walkthrough might have been helpful. Geographers mastered the game more quickly.

  • Students applied Economic theories to the SimCity model
  • Real life performance linked to reflection rather than in-game performance
  • Non-verbal presentation really helped dyslexic student and improved grades afterwards
  • Log could be redesigned to encourage Economic analysis

Interaction With The Program

How They Played the Game

City Map Growth

John was not present during the pilot, but chose to use the small map for his city. His plan was to keep the town small and spending to a minimum. Day 2 to 3 his city expanded steadily, but in day 4 he tried to expand too rapidly and lost most of his money. He needed to take out a loan, but by the end of day 5 his finances were again climbing steadily.

Mary chose a starter town for the pilot, in day 1 she overspent and so decided to make a new city in day 2. She was careful not to overspend and from then on had a steady stream of income.

Pippa did well with a starter city during the pilot and so started a new city for day 1. In day 1 she had a number of problems with garbage collection, in day 2 she then had problems with Power plants and so decided on day 3 to start a new city. She made a city called Donville and had problems with powering the city. However she had some success on days 4 and 5, although she still had problems with garbage collection.

Troy was the only player to keep the same city from the pilot through to the end of the experiment. In day 1 he felt that he had built too much on the pilot day, so he planned to start smaller and then slowly build up from there. By day 3 he figured that every policy is likely to have two effects and was beginning to build in peaks and troughs in taxation to maximize growth. It was noticeable that in day 5 Troy spent approximately $183,000 on infrastructure to maximise growth. Despite this his budget was always in surplus.

The interplay of systems in SimCity gives students the opportunity to start evaluating even before they have finished learning the theories. It also provides them with additional context to see those theories being played out.

Read the full study at:

http://goo.gl/941LG

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