Learning Games as a Platform for Simulated Science Practice

This paper presents early findings from a play test of "Homicide," a forensic investigation role-playing game developed at Learning Lab Denmark for cross-disciplinary science education. The author argues that digital game environments can simulate authentic science practice, allowing students to work through a process of inquiry similar to that of forensic experts, and that such "simulated situated learning spaces" may address long-standing criticisms of traditional science teaching that emphasizes memorization over practical understanding of scientific methods.

The game runs over one school week, with students working in investigative groups on four murder cases, sharing findings at meetings chaired by the teacher in the role of police chief, and concluding with written indictments. Its design integrates the inquiry steps of problem definition, hypothesis formation, investigation, observation, data collection, and explanation, using authentic-seeming forensic methods drawn from a handbook. The study is based on video observations and a short focus-group interview with pupils from two eighth-grade classes across two schools, making it a small, qualitative, exploratory investigation rather than a controlled experiment.

The observations point to intense collaborative learning. Students independently created and progressively refined diagrams to organize suspects, relationships, and evidence, and these tools spread from one group to others. Groups with separate cases nonetheless shared information where characters overlapped, which the author attributes partly to the game's noncompetitive structure and to the computer serving mainly as a database rather than the central play space. The author interprets these behaviors as evidence of methodological reflection and of communities of practice forming within the classroom.

The paper is candid about its limits. It acknowledges that the findings are preliminary, that it remains unclear whether knowledge about inquiry transfers to other settings, and that teacher participation strongly shapes outcomes, with some teachers adopting the professional role the game envisions and others treating it as a set of exercises. The author closes by calling for further research into the social dynamics, roles, and transferability of learning in such game-based science environments.