Research On The Design And Development Of Safety Educational Games From The Perspective Of The Situated Cognition Theory

Although all the community especially schools pay more and more attentions on primary safety education, the security issues still happens frequently. One of the causes is that the teaching strategy most schools use, emphasizing on the teaching and ignoring the doing, results in the lack of learning situation and learning motivation. However, both the learning situation and learning motivation are extremely important factors of safety education.Because of the functions of both education and game, Educational games have gradually become an appealing learning style in the student groups. There are four learning situations in educational game. They are plot situation, resource situation, mission situation and evaluation situation, which can not only stimulate learners’ learning motivation, but also effectively promote their learning transfer and cognitive ability. Educational games can simulate fire scene, transmit safety knowledge to the pupils in order to both learn safety knowledge in the process of playing and enhance their safety awareness.First of all, by analyzing a large number of literatures, the researches on design and development of domestic and abroad educational games are summarized and the related concepts and theories of educational games are discussed. Then from the viewpoints and connotations of the situated cognition theory, there is a close relationship between educational games and situated cognition theory with which learners’knowledge sense construction can be promoted efficiently. Thus, in combination with theories of situated cognition and educational games, the principles and procedures of educational game based on theories of situated cognition come forward. Accordingly, in terms of comments on safety educational game cases, early survey, teaching analysis as well as design of game plot, game resources, game tasks and evaluation of game design, an educational game on a fire safety game called The Little fireman is designed and the development of this game is elaborated in details. Finally, the game is tested in order to check the rationality and validity of the game design. The result shows that the game can make up for the lack of learning situation and learning motivation to some degree, so it has the nature of both education and game.