Seeing Change in Time: Video Games to Teach about Temporal Change in Scientific Phenomena Javier Corredor • Matthew Gaydos • Kurt Squire Published online: 22 August 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract This article explores how learning biological concepts can be facilitated by playing a video game that depicts interactions and processes at the subcellular level. Particularly, this article reviews the effects of a real-time strategy game that requires players to control the behavior of a virus and interact with cell structures in a way that resembles the actual behavior of biological agents. The evaluation of the video game presented here aims at showing that video games have representational advanta- ges that facilitate the construction of dynamic mental models. Ultimately, the article shows that when video game’s characteristics come in contact with expert knowledge during game design, the game becomes an excellent medium for supporting the learning of disciplin- ary content related to dynamic processes. In particular, results show that students who participated in a game- based intervention aimed at teaching biology described a higher number of temporal-dependent interactions as measured by the coding of verbal protocols and drawings than students who used texts and diagrams to learn the same topic. Keywords Video games Á Learning Á Biology Á Dynamic mental models Á Dynamic visual representations Introduction Video games favor learning in scientific and professional domains (Clark et al. 2011; Barab et al. 2007; Halverson 2005; Nash and Shaffer 2010; Shaffer 2005; Shaffer and Gee 2005; Squire and Durga 2009). They do so, in part, by promoting social interaction and collaborative reasoning (Black and Steinkuehler 2009), by providing learners with agency and feedback opportunities, and by creating adap- tive levels of task demand (Gee 2005, 2008). Video games, additionally, have representational characteristics that enhance the cognitive representation of certain situations. Particularly, video games include representations that are dynamic and interactive; features that are beneficial to learning (Plass Homer and Hayward 2009). To refine our understanding of the way that these characteristics influence learning further, this study specifically asks whether or not video games produce better cognitive representations of temporally dependent events than traditional (print media) educational resources. This question is framed under the idea that video game’s effects are produced in part through the formation of perceptually based representations, mental models (Johnson-Laird 1983), that traditionally have been defined as different than conceptual, propositional, and other non-perceptual representations (Anderson 2005). To address this question, this study compares the drawings and verbal protocols of students participating in a video game- based intervention, and those of students who underwent an intervention based on text and static diagrams. This study shows that games help learners to create robust mental models of scientific phenomena because of the way that games favor the creation of dynamic representations that encode temporal relationships. This study draws on prior evidence that animated ima- ges help learners to develop dynamic mental models J. Corredor Psychology Department, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Carrera 45 No 26–85, Ed. 212, Of. 211, Bogota ´, Colombia e-mail: jacorredora@unal.edu.co M. Gaydos (&) Á K. Squire Center for Games Learning and Society, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA e-mail: gaydos@wisc.edu 123 J Sci Educ Technol (2014) 23:324–343 DOI 10.1007/s10956-013-9466-4