Leacock, T., Paras, B., Bizzocchi, J. (2004). Applying Bloom to games: A preliminary methods description. E‐Learn 2004: Proceedings of the World Conference on E‐Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, 1330‐1334. [Pre‐Print] 1 Applying Bloom to Games – A Preliminary Methods Description Tracey Leacock tleacock@sfu.ca Brad Paras bparasa@sfu.ca Jim Bizzocchi jimbiz@sfu.ca School of Interactive Arts and Technology Simon Fraser University, CANADA Abstract: Bloom’s Taxonomy has had a major impact on how formal educational materials have been structured over the past half-century. Now that video games are becoming such a pervasive phenomenon – such a draw on players’ imagination and time – perhaps it is worth considering what games have to offer education by analyzing them in the framework of an educational taxonomy. This paper describes preliminary work to set up an effective method for performing just such an analysis. Our intent is that the outcomes will lead to information that will be useful to instructional designers and educators who seek to capture students’ interests and imagination, without simply attempting to turn all learning into a game. Introduction Computer games are powerful. Three quarters of children engage with computer games on a regular basis (Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2004); and half of all Americans age six and up play video games (Entertainment Software Association, 2004). Some educators argue that this time could be better spent focusing on schoolwork – formal education. Others argue that game-play teaches players new skills that may transfer to other social and work- related uses of digital technologies (Gee, 2003). Certainly successful video games have a strong ability to draw players into an imaginary space known as a "magic circle" (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). While in this immersive game world, players reach a state of flow in which they become so focused on what they are doing that outside events do not distract them (see Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Isn’t this the level of attention to lessons that every instructor would like to see in students? Our contention is that, while most games are not designed specifically as tools for learning, a lot of learning does take place during game play. Experienced players of successful games “know” a lot more than novice players, and typically, this learning seems to have been relatively painless. One doesn’t often hear a gamer complaining about having to skip their homework to spend time learning a new game. In this paper, we describe some preliminary research into the relationship between games and learning. Specifically, we have begun by looking at learning that occurs – incidentally or intentionally – in the real-time strategy game Age of Mythology: The Titans(AOM) (Ensemble Studios, 2003). In this game, players must balance resource gathering, military strength, and favor with the gods to expand their empire and eliminate their opponents’ empires. Our goal in studying this game is to identify what is learned, convert this information into a standard learning objective format, and then consider the results as one might consider any other set of objectives from a learning program. To do this, we are using a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Our intent is to place the identified objectives into the taxonomy and to look for patterns that may be suggestive of how instructional designers can structure formal learning experiences to achieve the levels of commitment to learning that game players achieve on a regular basis. Background Bloom's Taxonomy In 1956, a group of educational researchers published what has now become a classic reference for instructional designers – Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1994). The taxonomy provides a hierarchical approach to classifying educational objectives in the cognitive domain. For our research purposes, we are using an updated