6.2 Using Game Development to Engage Students in Science And

6.2 Using Game Development to Engage Students in Science and Technology Using Game Development to Engage Students in Science and Technology John Wiacek ECPI College of Technology [email protected] Abstract. Game design wor1<shops, camps and acl iv~i es engage K-12 students In STEM disciplines that use game engine and development tools. Game development Will have students create games and Simulations that Will inspire tnem to love technOlogy while learning ma th , physics, and,logic. By using lools such as Gamemaker, Alice, Unity, Gamesalad and others, students will get a sense of confidence and accomplishment creating games and simulations. 1.0 NOMENCLATURE technological society, all students need STEM : Science, Technology, Engineering, to develop their capabilities in STEM to and Math levels much beyond what was NPC : Non-Player Character, computer considered acceptable in the past .... controlled character Strengthening STEM education across GUI ; Graphical User Interface the nation is critical to maintaining a high STEP : Science and Technology quality of life for our citizens and Enrichment Program. ensuring that Americans remain competitive in international science and 2.0 WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? technology. Public awareness and action In this day and age of science and are critical to addressing this crisis." [1) technology, students are struggling more than ever with math, science, and To respond to this many schools have taken technology. There are several countries a look at their curriculum and teaching across the world that have noticed a decline methods and modified their methods to in their math and science scores over the focus on test questions more than the last couple of decades. Almost 30 percent course material [2}. This is not a long-term of students in their first year of college are solution; it just addresses the symptoms forced to take remedial science and math (the test scores) rather than the cause (the classes because they are not prepared to lack of student understanding). take college ~ level courses[1]. The United States has addressed this by creating "A 2.1 Why is this happening? National Action Plan for Addressing the Over the last fifty years or so what has Critical Needs of the U. S. Science, Changed? \Mly is thi s becoming a problem? Tech nology, Engineering, and Mathematics The reasons differ quite a bit for each region Education System." (1 J Other countries have in the world. However, as reviewed below, taken similar steps in addressing this some reasons transcend regional decline. differences. "The United States possesses the most One of these reasons is the perception that innovative, technologicafly capable STEM topics are too hard and the student economy in the world, and yet its will fail at them. The test is not the problem, science, technology, engineering, and but the subject. Before even getting started, mathematics (S TEM) education system many students have already given up. Math is failing to ensure that all American has the biggest stigma; most students start students receive the skills and their struggle here and this leads to a similar knowledge required for success in the problem in their future science, engineering 21st century wOrl<fOfCe .... To succeed in and technology study since they are based on math. this new information~based and highly 853 Another big reason is the real-world they know what needs to be on the screen examples used in current textbooks and to verify that everything is working properly, classes. The examples used are not and can check their own solutions. The necessarily real-world from the student's average student in the United States has point of view and can be hard to over fi ve thousand hours of gameplay understand. experience (3] giving them confidence when checking their solutions. All this time and Students are affected greatly by peer experience with video game start them off pressure, and the majority of the STEM with a mental preparation for success and curriculum falls in an unpopular category. very often a passion for video games. Many This gives students even less motivation to of them have also played video games that want to succeed in these areas of their they modified or created new levels for with studies. the games built-in editors. These built-in editors, however, are not very good for School systems everywhere are being teaching because they have been simplified strained with smaller budgets and more to let anyone create their own levels easily students, making it difficult for students to and otten lack documentation. get the help they need. Students learning the material don't get enough help figuring The subject of video games also creates a out how to solve the problems that are given peer-pressure environment that motivates to them and how to estimate possible students to do better. They strive to create solutions. In the end, many students just games that will impress their peers in the turn in a number hoping that it's correct. classroom and friends outside of dass. Often students will put in more time in These are just a few of the bigger reasons making and polishing a game or a for the decline in STEM education and a simulation than they would anything else in need for improvement. This does not their studies. account for many other reasons that might be political , cultural, or other in nature. We have seen at ECPI that the game and simulation courses have an attendance rate 2.2 Overcoming the Problem ten percent higher than other technical These problems of getting the next dasses in their major. This also improves generation to like and be good at STEM and their pass rate in these courses by a similar see it as a viable possibility for their future percentage. We have also seen this same careers can be overcome. We have noticed trend with camps that we have offered to while teaching game and simulation high school students compared to camps in development for over ten years that many of other fields [41 . these problems can be overcome fairly easily with the right tools and activities. We Other institutions such as Purdue take a look at alternative solutions that get University, MIT, NASA and more have students to learn while having fun and created games or tools to appeal to the making their own games. younger generations. They have created these games and tools to bring new blood to 2.2.1 The Subject of Game their respective industries. Robert Morris Development University did a survey of fourth graders Game development has a great appeal to before and after a STEP camp. The the majority of the younger students, and students came to the college four hours this by itself is enough to increase students' every week for eighteen weeks, with their confidence in themselves. They consider time split equally between technology and themselves experts at games from day one. sciences (5). For young students attending Younger students also have a key camps at ECPI , we found that 36% of the knowledge of how a video game works, and 854 students surveyed before the camp were game engine such as Unity or Torque with interested in a career that involved STEM some C++ like programming. compared to 68% after the camp. This significant change has to be contributed Unlike many word problems in math where largely to the students starting to like the students struggle to understand the subject especially at such an problem, the calculations, and the process impressionable age. for checking a solution, the task is clear and the student can focus on solving the 2.2.2 Math the Building Block problem. They can check their solution by Math, being the building block for science, playing the game and immediately know if engineering and technology, needs to be there is a problem with their solution. addressed first. Game development can be Having these visual cues from the game, used to teach math using simple classic they can see what is wrong and can usually games such as Breakout, Space Invaders, solve the problem by themselves most of and Asteroids. The math, logic, and rules in the time, along the way learning the these games are simple making them the concepts in greater depth. ideal choice. We also start by using a game engine that has a graphical programming language requiring no programming I n Fig 1 you see one of the games we used experience, such as Gamemaker or to teach the Cartesian coordinate system to Gamesalad. All this allows us to focus on fourth and fifth graders based on the classic the logic and basic math. Breakout game. The students loved the Recreating and expanding many of the early lesson and did not even realize that this games can be used to introduce the involved math. The students set up the ball following math concepts: movement, bat, and blocks in the game using basic GUI commands and using • Unit Conversion - by converting screen screen coordinates that are very similar to coordinates to world coordinates in game • Cartesian Coordinates - Using basic movement to calculate character positions • Functions - can be taught by using the built-in functions and creating new one for power-ups in games • Sine, cosine - for player rotation • • Statistics and probability - for creating ~ random distributions for NPC, power Figure 1 ups, and dealing damage These touch just some of the simpler the CarteSian coordinates. Math is where concepts; many more math concepts can be we had the greatest improvement for our introduced in similar ways. Some of the third and fourth graders from our STEP more advanced math, such as matrix program in comparison to their peers from manipulation and the complex number over two hundred students surveyed [5].

Load more