Education Commons^™

Word Towers: Assessing Domain Knowledge With Non-Traditional Genres, Tyler Baron, Ashish Amresh

Ashish Amresh

This paper presents the design, development and the results of a pilot study for Word Towers (WT), an educational game that combines gameplay mechanics from board-style word building and arcade style tower defense games. To our knowledge, this is the first ever attempt to merge these game genres into a functional educational game. Our efforts open the possibility for other learning games to be reworked into new genres, increasing novelty and player engagement. Expanding the range of genres also allows for learning games to reach a wider audience. The goal of the WT is to provide a natural method for …