Blending Bloom’s Taxonomy and Serious Game Design

Abstract

Using serious games and interactive exercises can provide a safe and effective practice environment for computer network defenders, but development of these games must blend subject matter content, instructional design learning objectives and engaging game design to encourage learners to practice and develop their skills. As part of a program to develop an interactive training platform for the next generation computer network defender, we developed several Flash-based, casual games designed to target different levels of learning objectives as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy, for various skills, subject matter knowledge and tools. This paper lays out a working hypothesis based on that experience: some types of games are actually better suited to certain learning objectives.