Chapter 8: Developing a Research Agenda for Educational Games and Simulations:

The research overview provided by Tobias, Fletcher, Dai, and Wind (this volume) is very helpful in summarizing studies to date on various dimesions of educational games and simulations. The next challenge for the field is to move beyond isolated research in which each group of investigtors uses an idiosyncratic set of definitions, conceptual frameworks, and methods. Instead, to make further progress, we as scholars should adopt common research strategies and models—not only to ensure a higher standard of rigor, but also to enable studies that complement each other in what they explore. As this book documents, we now know enough as a research community to undertake collective scholarship that subdivides the overall task of understanding the strengths and limits of games and simulations for teaching and learning. Further, through a continuously evolving research agenda, we can identify for funders and other stakeholders an ongoing assessment of which types of studies are most likely to yield valuable insights, given the current state of knowledge.