Guts And Bolts — Did I learn anything?
The premise of “Guts and Bolts” might remind you of a modern-day Frankenstein project: assembling a living being from bits and bobs you might find in your garage. This strange yet fascinating concept serves as the foundation of an educational journey designed by BrainPOP for children in grades 3–8.
The game explores the respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems, demonstrating their interconnectedness and the essential movement of oxygen, nutrients, and carbon dioxide throughout the body.
After playing the game, it feels to me that the game intended for the players to
- Understand the Basic Functions of the Human Body like digesting food, circulating oxygen, CO2, and nutrients via the blood, respiring, etc
- Apply the concepts of biology in a problem-solving context, reinforcing their understanding through active engagement
- Think about the human body as a system of interrelated components
The deeper understanding developed during gameplay can enhance students’ knowledge of the human anatomy and improve retention, allowing them to use this information in other contexts such as medicine, diet, etc.
The journey begins with an engaging short film that sets the stage: players, assuming the role of a robot, are tasked with constructing a cyborg that not only looks human but functions like one too.
The game relies on introducing complex concepts through a gradual process — providing clear scaffolds right off the bat. The initial task is very simple — connect pipes to transport blood — but crucial because this is where players learn to distinguish between the head and tail of the pipe. This knowledge is important later to help the players make judgments about how to connect various organs.
Soon after, the game introduces essential elements like oxygen, nutrients, and carbon dioxide, employing distinct visual symbols to ease the identification of each element’s source and destination.
As players delve deeper, they’re tasked with integrating various organs into this network, ensuring each receives the necessary resources to function. Starting with the brain, the game makes it evident that it requires oxygen and nutrients while expelling carbon dioxide, subtly teaching the importance of these elements to bodily functions. This is easy for the player to understand because of the game’s effective use of symbols.
The exploration continues with the digestive system, where the design uses three distinct pipes to teach about inputs and outputs — a foundational concept reinforced from earlier lessons.
It is important for the player to know that nutrients and oxygen are an input to something whereas a mix of nutrients, oxygen, and carbon dioxide is an output of the system based on their previous learnings about pipes.
A child learning about these organs in school will be able to recognize that the teardrop-shaped bag is the stomach and the gooey tangled mess is the intestines — this would help them deduce that food or nutrients go into the stomach and waste from the kidney goes out from the intestines.
After connecting the pipes, the player can click the “Start Fluids” button to ensure everything works correctly. The notes on the clipboard have some useful information but not always. The game provides feedback by check-marking this step if the player finishes it correctly, allowing them to proceed to the next step.
The player cannot try the next step before completing the previous step because each step builds directly on top of the previous ones and gets progressively more difficult. This not only ensures understanding but also enforces the sequential learning process, where progression is locked behind the completion.
The game then moves on to challenge the players to integrate two different organ systems such as the respiratory system and the digestive system. This part of the game relies on the player having learned the inputs and outputs of each system.
A confusing aspect of the design of this stage arises from the unclear pipe labels on the left — some are marked, while others are not. It seems the designers intended for players to deduce that blood, enriched with oxygen from the lungs, is directed toward the intestines to aid in food processing.
The arrangement of the pipes might have been more thoughtfully executed to facilitate learning and prevent confusion from a tangle of indistinguishable pipes. It’s possible the design aimed to reflect the actual positioning of arteries and veins in the human body, though I can’t say for certain without expert knowledge.
When the player makes a mistake while connecting the pipes, they’ll figure it out when they “Start Fluids” because the organ system breaks and starts malfunctioning because the resources aren’t being routed properly. Players can either remove individual pipes that they think are faulty or click on the “Clear Pipes” button to start from a blank slate.
“Guts and Bolts” encourages a trial-and-error approach, allowing unlimited attempts to correct mistakes. This design principle supports the notion that making errors is a natural part of the learning process. As the game progresses, the integration of various organ systems requires players to apply and extend their knowledge, embodying principles of active learning and the application of new information.
As the game progresses, the difficulty increases with the integration of three organ systems. Players must apply the knowledge acquired from earlier stages to make the correct connections. This gameplay not only reinforces their understanding of the human organ system through visual cues but also educates them on the interconnectivity of these systems, the types of resources each system requires, and the outputs produced. This approach effectively bridges knowledge gaps.
Additionally, while the game supports learning through trial and error, enabling players to gradually familiarize themselves with the human body’s complexities, a foundational understanding of the subject matter is expected.
In the game’s final challenge, players must accurately link various systems — the heart, brain, stomach, intestines, and lungs — to assemble a fully operational cyborg. This task demands analytical reasoning, such as understanding that blood enriched with oxygen from the lungs is circulated by the heart to the intestines and that blood carrying nutrients and oxygen from the intestines is then directed to the brain. By navigating these complex connections, players gain a deeper, implicit understanding of the human body’s functionality, even though these concepts are not explicitly explained.
In the end, you get to see the grotesque monster that you have breathed life into.
The game uses the following learning science principles:
🪜Scaffolding: The game sequences instruction towards higher goals, building complexity gradually as players progress.
🔊Feedback: Provides visual feedback during learning which helps players adjust their strategies and understandings in real time.
🔢Segmenting: Lessons are presented in learner-paced segments, allowing players to digest information bit by bit.
📐Pretraining: Introduces players to the basic components (like pipes and organs) before advancing to more complex tasks.
🚦Signaling: Uses visual symbols to represent oxygen, nutrients, and CO2, guiding how to process the material.
🧠Active, Critical Learning Principle: Players are actively engaged in problem-solving rather than passively receiving information.
🍃Discovery Principle: Players learn through exploration and trial-and-error without overt instruction.
This game is a true testament to the power of combining education with interactive media. The game seamlessly integrates educational content into gameplay, making learning feel like a natural part of the game experience. Successfully completing levels and overcoming challenges gives players a sense of accomplishment, positively reinforcing the learning objectives.
In essence, “Guts and Bolts” is a commendable effort to make learning about the human body interactive, fun, and meaningful. Its design reflects key learning principles such as scaffolding, feedback, and the application of knowledge. However, improvements could be made to enhance clarity and reduce potential confusion, ensuring that the educational journey is as smooth as it is enriching.
