the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 19 Sep 2025
Development and Iterative Design of an educational game ''Magma Pop'' to teach undergraduate fractional crystallization concepts
Abstract. Fractional crystallization and mineralogy are foundational yet challenging topics in undergraduate geoscience education. The M&M’s® magma chamber lab is a widely used hands-on activity to illustrate these concepts, but students often focus on procedural tasks over conceptual understanding. To address this, Magma Pop, a serious educational game, was developed for a third-year volcanology course at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The game reinforces key concepts such as mineral formulae, the role of fractional crystallization, and the relationship between temperature and magma composition through interactive, visual gameplay. In this paper, we document the iterative development of Magma Pop and aim to emphasize the role of games in advancing geoscience pedagogy and highlight how Magma Pop can be used in a geoscience curriculum.
- Preprint
(1538 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 03 Dec 2025)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-4406', Fred Jourdan, 15 Oct 2025 reply
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 370 | 24 | 10 | 404 | 10 | 11 |
- HTML: 370
- PDF: 24
- XML: 10
- Total: 404
- BibTeX: 10
- EndNote: 11
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1
Review of “ Development and Iterative Design of an educational game "Magma Pop” to teach undergraduate fractional crystallization concept” by Saha et al.
Review by F. Jourdan
It’s the first time that I’ve been invited to review an education paper and therefore I’m more used to evaluating research papers, lots of them related to volcanology. That being said, I’m an educator myself teaching 1st year uni in geology and I truly enjoy the change of pace and topic here. This paper is well written and clear on its goal and its content. I’m therefore recommending publication with minor corrections. That being said, I have one main concern and a few comments after that.
Main concern: I’ve looked throughout the text, and sorry if I missed it, but I did not see any link for the code/game. I don’t know the policy of this journal, but I would assume that if a paper is about a very cool and engaging game, then there should be a mean for the readers to access the game. Otherwise, I the purpose of sharing that with an audience is greatly diminish. A downloadable version should be provided, or a contact if someone want to access the game. If the authors want to sell it, this should be indicated as well, and I would still recommend an evaluation version to be provided.
I have a few comments hereafter, at the discretion of the authors.
L67: a point to consider for an educator and I would suggest rephrasing a little: “reinforcing the learning by repetition” will work for the short term, but unlikely to have people remembering formulas. And why should they? Rather, knowing what elements goes into a given mineral is more useful. For example, Fe, Si and O in fayalite. Useful. The full formula? I don’t even remember it exactly and I use this mineral all the time in my research! The difference might be subtle, but I would argue that the second approach is more likely to stick and not push people away. Who likes learning formula by heart after all? Why I’m saying that, simply because if this phase is too heavily gear toward forcing formulas into students’ heads, that might be a big turn off for them even before the game truly begins. Something to keep in mind. However, in this case, I can see that the formula is provided (and even later in the text, it is provided at every level of the game), so it’s not really to make them learn formula, but rather understand the concept of elements form minerals. Hence my suggestion to rephrase, so it’s clear for the reader.
As a video gamer myself, things that are known to be addictive, are the visual effects and rewards associated with an action. So here, an anorthite crystal is collected a “pop” on the screen showing a small anorthite would be nice. A huge picture of anorthite when the players unlocked the full suite of 5 as well perhaps. In addition, this make sure that the student understand that the color of a mineral is a give away of its composition. E.g. darker mineral are more mafic and therefore include Fe and/or Mg. Good that characters have been added. What many gamers enjoyed (but not for everyone, so only as an option) is competition. So several well-seasoned teams could compete in completing the task (definitely not the first time going through it).
Level 2: Nice stuff. I would suggest adding a picture of a stratified magma chamber where the olivine end up at the bottom, followed by a mixture of olivine and pyroxene, etc … add the concept of mineral weight sinking at the bottom.
Fig. 4: the answers are in reverse order from the questions listed above (even if the letters can be related). I would suggest changing the order either of the list, or the graph so it goes in the same order.
Fig. 4: I’m really surprised to see that this game did not change much there understanding – it’s clearly a good one (except for question c, where still 75% of the student got it wrong). I assume the correct response is no. so they might be confused by seeing one big piece of gold (effectively 1 atom) and assume it’s valuable. How to fix that misunderstanding though? It would be good to elaborate how that could be improved in the future.
L210: yes, the students should always have access to the formula, or as I was saying, what kind of atoms go into a mineral. Because, is the goal learning something by heart, or understanding a complex process? Obviously, the latter. I saw latter that it was implemented which was a very wise decision indeed.
L87: The pace of the game is described as rapid. In what sense? Is there a timer that force student to do it in a given time (A big no-no I would say), or something else? Could please the authors clarify this point.
I think this game is great. I feel there is some untouched potential though. As for the next level of improvement, I would add a fourth level with two real-life scenarios (or that could be incorporated before in the previous levels). 1. Make a volcano explode. Once the melt is ultra-silicic and saturated with volatiles, it should just explode. I’m not a developer, but I don’t think it’s hard to do. “explode your own volcano”. How cool would that be! 2. You were talking about valuable ore deposits. Too easy, concentrate the liquid and the gold, make it move to cracks at the end, and there you go. Ore deposits associated with volcanoes explained (in a very rudimentary way of course).
What I’m trying to say is that is all theoretical – unless the student will end up working directly with magmatic petrology, that is not going to be a game changer in their career. So it would be good to extend it to real life example (Pompei, etc…) that would connect the students with a real story and as I’m sure the authors know well, people remember stories even better. So there is more chance that this stick on the long term (again, gamer / teacher talking here).