After playing Progenitor X over three weeks, 39 middle and high school students showed a statistically significant 11% pre-post gain in stem-cell science content knowledge, in a one-group design with no comparison¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2012 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Students who played Progenitor X over a three-week period showed a statistically significant increase in stem-cell science content knowledge (11% gain, p=.01). → Richard Halverson 2012

Evidence¶

Richard Halverson 2012¶

Richard Halverson, Elizabeth Owen, Nathan Wills, R. Benjamin Shapiro. (2012). Game-Based Assessment: An integrated model for capturing evidence of learning in play. ERIA Working Paper. http://www.eriainteractive.com/index.php

q2 · i? · design · r2

Pre-post analysis of 39 middle and high school students who played Progenitor X over a three-week period, each completing a brief assessment before and after play. The article reports "a statistically significant increase in scores (11% gain, p=.01)"; no effect size is printed. There was no control or comparison group, so the gain cannot be attributed to the game itself, although the authors read it that way.

"The pre-post tests indicated that players learned stem-cell science content as a result of play. Players had a statistically significant increase in scores (11% gain, p=.01)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Students showed significant content-knowledge gains from pre-test to post-test after the Digital World level
• The number of far failures — cycles ended by incorrect collection and/or time running out — was negatively correlated with pre-post learning gains in Progenitor X
• Aggregate play-efficiency measures in Progenitor X were not correlated with pre-post learning gains, except for efficiency in the final organ boss level (r = .3219)
• Number of cell-cycle starts and cell-cycle destroys in Progenitor X were negatively correlated with pre-post learning gains, while total cycle starts across the game were not
• Upper-quartile and lower-quartile learning-gain players showed opposite correlations between cell-cycle activity and learning, and lower-quartile players had more far failures (7 vs 2.3 average cycles)
• Three weeks of explicit language-focused strategy instruction produced no significant word-problem gain in this study — reports the opposite