The document summarizes the current research areas of Katrin Becker, including: 1) Understanding learning design in commercial video games through studying how successful games already facilitate learning. 2) Developing a "Magic Bullet" serious game design model and an "Instructional Ethology" methodology for analyzing games. 3) Studying interdisciplinary knowledge and communication needed for cross-discipline collaborations like an instructional designer creating an educational game. 4) A general education research project examining how learners connect science and math concepts to their lives.

1. What I do When I’m Not Teaching (or farming) a.k.a. My Research Katrin Becker The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1947) US Social Scientist

8. My Approach: Study the Masters They already have it right. Why?

9. 1a. Games and Pedagogy Anyone who makes a distinction between games and learning doesn't know the first thing about either. Marshall McLuhan

11. Successful Games K.Becker My Research Facilitate Learning

12. 1b. The Magic Bullet A Serious Game Design Model “ One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. And it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.” Carl Gustav Jung

14. © 2009 K.Becker

15. 1c. Instructional Ethology Reverse Engineering for Serious Design of Educational Games I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man: It is we. Konrad Lorenz

17. Methodological Synergy Behavioural Analysis Structural Analysis Ethology Ontological Excavation Game as Object Game Ethology (dynamic) Game Structure (static) Game Design Documents Reverse Engineering Behaviour Studies

18. Methodological Synergy Behavioural Analysis Structural Analysis Ethology Ontological Excavation Game as Object Game Ethology (dynamic) Game Structure (static) Game Design Documents Reverse Engineering Behaviour Studies

19. 2. Body of Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Applications What does someone from one discipline need to know about another if their work requires knowledge of both? It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. G.K.Chesterton There is only one nature. The division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole. Bill Wulf