The Design And Development Of Digital Game Based On Activity Theory

With the rapid development of network technology and computer technology, digital gamesas an effective teaching method, has been widely applied to the field of education. In order tomeet the new requirements of the society for education, design and develop more effectivedigital games, domestic and foreign scholars have used many theories for the design of digitalgames. Activity Theory is a theory of researching human behavior activities under specific socialcultural-historical background. Digital game design based on activity theory will promote thedevelopment of digital games in education.Activity Theory emerged in the1920s. It is a theoretical framework for understanding andconstructing activity under the social cultural-historical context. Activity Theory do not concernthe state of knowledge, but rather the activity process of people’s participation, the nature ofthe tools in the activity, social relations and contextual relationship of collaborators, the purposeand intent of the activity, as well as object and results. Therefore, Activity Theory to the designand development of digital game has inestimable value and significance.This research adopts literature research, evaluation research, system development method,research work mainly revolves the following three aspects:1. The basic theory research. On the basis of related literature at home and abroad, thisresearch elaborated the basic concept, evolution, and application of Activity Theory that providesthe theoretical basis for the design and development of digital game.2. Construction of digital game instructional design model based on Activity Theory. On thebasis of the detailed analysis of education activities and learning resources design pattern, thisresearch elaborated the structural elements and hierarchy structure of digital game design. Finally,a digital game instructional design framework is constructed.3. The design of digital game based on Activity Theory. In combination with the selectedcontent of courses and with reference to the above instructional design framework, this researchdesign the game-based instructional design from aspects of learners, learning goals. On the basis of the instructional design framework, the digital game itself could be designed from the threeaspects of game-based learning, evaluation modification, and game script.4. The realization of digital game casus based on Activity Theory. On the basis of the aboveinstructional design and game design itself, this research in combination with the selectedcontent of courses to develop a game casus on the Flash development platform with the ActionScript3.0. Then present the game in a game-based learning website which is developed on theDreamweaver platform with the HTML.As the foregoing research work step by step, this study have achieved the four significantresearch results as following.1. This research elaborated and defined the related concept, and take a new look at digitalgame from the perspective of Activity Theory. This provided a theoretical support for digitalgame based on Activity Theory.2. On the basis of the detailed analysis of education activities and learning resources designpattern at home and abroad, this research put forward the structural relation of elements modelabout digital game design based on Activity Theory. Finally, in combination with HierarchyActivity Theory, a digital game instructional design framework is constructed.3. Based on digital game teaching design framework, combined with the specific contentsof course, the digital game was carried on the detailed design. In digital game design, game-baselearning module is the core. The module is divided into activity, behavior and operation threelevels for the detailed design of digital games.4. With Flash and Dreamweaver as development platform, and using the Action Scriptlanguage and HTML hypertext markup language, this study developed a digital game called“garbage sorting experts” and website as the case of this study support.Due to the limitation of research time and technical development ability, although digitalgame design based on Activity Theory can reflect the original research purpose and thoughts, butthere are still many problems and shortcomings. The future research work will be further perfectof the digital game design model and the developed game.