BMX bandits: The design of an educational computer game for disaffected youth

This paper briefly describes the design, development and evaluation of a prototype multimedia Interactive Learning Environment (ILE). This utilized narrative and a game type environment in an attempt to provide an engaging and motivating learning experience for a group of young people attending Salford Youth Service. The main area addressed was how to ensure that the ILE would appeal to children who found traditional approaches to learning difficult. Additionally, an important aim of the project was to engage the learners in the design process as they were identified as having low self-esteem. A previously developed design framework which focuses on the needs and views of the learners and aims to facilitate both requirements gathering and design issues using a narrative based approach was used. The ILE that has been developed is influenced by the design of computer games as this was a common interest of the focus group who participated in the design. The ILE is briefly described and an initial evaluation of its use presented. The paper concludes by identifying the aspects of the ILE, which appealed to the students and assesses the affect of the motivational aspects.