Toolkit for Creating Science-Centric Instructional Video Games
Carlos R. Morales, Computer Graphics TechnologyGabriela Weaver, Chemistry
The project goal was to develop a research-validated toolkit for creating instructional video games to teach scientific concepts.
Instructional goals
- Provide tools for educators to develop interactive instructional video games
- Create commercial-quality games that immerse students more fully in the learning experience
- Allow students to experience and visualize abstract scientific concepts through a realistic medium
Project Rationale
There is currently a shortage of tools for instructional designers and courseware developers to create gaming activities that compare with commercial games. An analysis of available instructional games reveals that most are clever implementations of interactive multimedia technology. In these games, the developers are most concerned with delivering instructional content, but they spend little time on the immersiveness of the game or the psychological factors that create a strong game-playing environment. The goal of this project is to create the necessary tools for people without a background in game design to create instructionally sound games that compare with commercial games in terms of interactivity, immersiveness, and environment.
Implementation
The toolkit is an outgrowth of an interdepartmental effort by the Computer Graphics Technology and the Chemistry Departments. While awaiting a response to a proposal submitted to NSF to fund this activity, the authors assembled a group of students to begin building a game to teach chemical equilibrium. The proposed toolkit will allow courseware developers to rapidly create gaming activities using familiar multimedia authoring packages such as Authorware, Toolbook, and Director. It will contain tools for character creation, AI for non-player characters, networking, linking in-game and instructional assessment, and various other tasks.
Technologies Used
The toolkit will provide pre-made components that are difficult for a typical courseware developer to produce. These components include AI routines for implementing NPC behavior, in-game assessment routines, and Pathfinding modules. The net result will be a mechanism for rapidly building games that are instructionally sound. The toolkit will ship as a set of web services and as compiled COM/active-x components.
Impact on Student Learning
The proposed toolkit has the potential to not only accelerate the rate at which students absorb instruction in the sciences but also allow them to experience and visualize abstract scientific concepts in a realistic manner using common gaming equipment. Because the proposed system can be applied to all science courses and can be deployed on commonly available hardware, the potential number of students that can be effected is virtually limitless. The development of the game and the toolkit is a small part of a larger project that aims to create a data-driven theoretical model for the effective use of game elements to teach scientific concepts. It is expected that students that undertake instruction developed through the research validated toolkit will experience faster absorption of the materials, enhanced visualization of abstract concepts, and enhanced problem-solving abilities Formative and summative evaluations will be conducted to validate the developed model and toolkit.