Application of heuristic teaching thought to educational game development

Abstract

As one of the advanced modern teaching models, heuristic teaching guides students to learn on their own initiative by inspiration and encouragement. And meanwhile, by embedding pedagogical activities into highly enjoyable interactions, educational games increase learners' motivation effectively. In this paper, by applying the heuristic teaching thought to the development of educational games and combining the benefits of heuristic teaching and educational games, we propose a novel Heuristic Model based educational game development method, which will surely enhance educational game's teaching effect largely. As an example, the framework of a prototype of a customized educational game developed on the base of Heuristic Model is introduced at the end of the paper. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg.