Material Detail

Life Preservers is a video game based on National Science standards that teaches about evolution, adaptation, and the history of life on earth. It is an engaging, fun, pedagogically rich learning experience that can fit within a single class period.  Life Preservers was funded by the National Science Foundation. It was created by the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University.  The project is conducted by Professor Carrie Heeter (heeter@msu.edu) and director of game development is Brian Winn (winnb@msu.edu) both at Michigan State University.  Using Life Preservers, we have conducted research on gender, science games, play style, and learning.  To give teachers flexibility when they use Life Preservers in their classroom, the authors created a long and a short version of the game. The short version, playable in about a half hour, has only one round, THE AGE OF DINOSAURS. The long version, playable in about 45 minutes, has that same AGE OF DINOSAURS round followed by THE AGE OF MAMMALS.  An extensive teacher information site at http://gel.msu.edu/lifepreservers provides information about the national science standards, science backstory, learning from the game, and advice about teaching evolution. The student site at http://lifepreservers.msu.edu offers a choice of short and long version and a link to the teacher site.