Designing Digital Games to Teach Road Safety: A Study of Graduate Students’ Experiences

Abstract

In this paper, we present a framework for designing digital educational games to teach road safety rules specific to Alberta. The framework is inspired by game design literature and graduate students’ prior domain experience in their respective fields of teaching. To evaluate the proposed framework a study was conducted. The study aimed at designing road safety games with the participation of six graduate students using four phases: brainstorming, design, prototyping, and implementation. Cognitive insights presented by graduate students provide an effective rationale for game design that teaches traffic rules to improve road safety in general. Students enjoyed working as a collaborative unit and designed their games by means of instructional design theories, learning theories, and game design principles. The study indicated that the proposed framework may simplify the game design process with effective and efficient collaboratory design sessions in educational settings.