Dino Lab: Designing and Developing an Educational Game for Critical Thinking

Introduction

Dino Lab represents a collaborative effort among educators and scientists at the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU), game designers from the Games and Apps Lab (GApp Lab) at the University of Utah, a cognitive learning scientist from the University of Utah, and Title I middle school teachers and students. Dino Lab is an educational, or serious, game that uses digital representations of actual museum objects (i.e., dinosaur fossils) to facilitate engagement in and practice with a set of key cognitive processes involved in critical thinking. This chapter describes how museum objects and paleontology research, research on critical thinking processes, and principles of game design were synthesized and balanced during the conceptualization, development, and refinement of Dino Lab. Using examples from Dino Lab’s iterative development cycles, we discuss our findings about the potential boundaries between educational and entertainment features in games for critical thinking. We also highlight key challenges in creating educational games that target complex cognitive processes. Finally, we share a set of principles for future development of educational games for critical thinking as informed by lessons learned during this project.