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.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again