WhyReef

During the summer of 2012, The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) began a collaborative project with UW-Stout in order to analyze the effectiveness of the Museum’s WhyReef program. WhyReef, an online, socially interactive coral reef simulation designed for youth ages 8-16, launched in March 2009 and has since reached over 160,000 unique players. This project focused upon a robust evaluation and analysis of WhyReef’s learning goals and gameplay mechanics. This was made possible by a data set of player content and statistics provided by FMNH, as well as a personal trip to FMNH to interview the WhyReef educational team. Research was divided into three topics and determined that: 1.) WhyReef is very successful in increasing coral reef attention and appreciation, 2.) The best time to launch attention-grabbing, critical events is on weekdays during the summer, and 3.) Meaningful Motion is a key gameplay mechanic for increasing WhyReef player comprehension.