Education Through Navigation

Some popular 3D educational video games incorporate vast amounts of content with limited direct instruction. This exploratory study investigates player navigation to determine how wayfinding aids and level design impact interaction with embedded instructional content. To investigate player behavior, participants completed navigational tasks within a larger usability study of an environmental science video game, Mission HydroSci. This study adopts a mixed-method approach, including: (a) demographic questionnaires and geographic skills assessment, (b) virtual participant observation, (c) game logs of user actions, and (d) analysis of eye-tracking data related to in-game navigational aids. We found that participant self-reported average weekly gameplay, affect toward science, and navigation experience correlated to player interaction with some wayfinding aids and the speed in which participants completed tasks. In addition to these demographic
correlations, in-game player movement and visual fixation duration present differences that may be valuable
for future behavioral clustering. We use these results to discuss design implications for 3D virtual learning
environments.