Conundrum: A Serious Game Informed by Bloom's Taxonomy for Teaching Ethics and Social Issues

Abstract

Building technology to support students who must learn ethics and social issues is a difficult problem. In fact ethics and social issues is an example of an ill-defined domains, which typically are resistant to standard intelligent tutoring systems techniques. An analysis of current pedagogical tools for teaching Computer Science ethics and social issues using Bloom’s Taxonomy shows that the task needs tools for achieving Application, Evaluation and Creation educational goals. One promising approach which has the potential to achieve such goals is educational games. This paper explores a proof of concept educational game called Conundrum. This serious game provides three ways for learners to interact with it, each supporting a level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. An experiment was run in a Computer Science ethics and social issues class showing promising results that the design of Conundrum led to students achieving Application, Evaluation and Creation goals. A multidimensional student model was also developed to aid instructors and learners understand their progress. The experiment showed that the design of Conundrum did have some good aspects but leaves a lot of future work to maximize its potential.