A Review of Applications of Computer Games in Education and Training

Session T4A A Review of Applications of Computer Games in Education and Training

Felipe Arango, El-Sayed Aziz, Sven K. Esche and Constantin Chassapis Stevens Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, USA [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

Abstract - Scientists, engineers and educators are rendering, audio output, in-game physics modeling, game increasingly using environments enabled by advanced logics, rudimentary artificial intelligence, user interactions cyberinfrastructure tools for their research, formal and as well as multi-user networking) and is usually informal education and training, career development accompanied by a software development kit (SDK). These and life-long learning. For instance, academic SDKs enable others to develop customized content that is institutions as well as private training and education then utilized in conjunction with the game engine. companies have recently started to explore the potential Currently, several computer game engines are commercially of commercially available multi-player computer game available and have been used by developers to create very engines for the development of virtual environments for realistic massive multiplayer game environments (e.g. instructional purposes. Most of these developments are World of Warcraft [2], Everquest II [3], Second Life [4]). At still in their early stages and are focused mainly on present, some of the better known commercial game engines investigating the suitability of interactive games for representing the cutting edge of technology in first person remote user interaction, content distribution and perspective graphics are Epic Game’s Unreal engine [5], id collaborative activities. Some of the ongoing projects Software’s DOOM 3 engine [6] and Valve Corporation’s have additional research objectives, such as the analysis Source engine [7]. The type of games that these engines of patterns of human behavior and the study of the were designed for are predominantly “first person shooters”, collaboration between users and their interaction with where the user controls the movements and actions of a virtual environments. A few other developments are computer character and the visual display mimics the aimed at utilizing computer game technologies as a perspective of what the in-game character would see with platform for personnel training and educational his/her own eyes. laboratory simulations. This paper provides a review of Recently, computer gaming [8] started to be used in the current state of computer game applications, with a many fields, including medicine, disaster response and special focus on education and training implementations. military training. However, creating educational games is not simply a matter of adding educational content to some Index Terms - Scheduling, Online laboratory, Remote existing game environment. Instead, the software itself experiment, Sharing, Virtual experiment. should be designed based on evidence that the particular educational content can be effectively delivered in a INTRODUCTION computer game environment [9].

In recent years, video games have begun to impact students’ CLASSIFICATION OF GAME ENGINE APPLICATIONS lives. Most high school and college age pupils are highly accustomed to and very skillful in playing computer games. Computer game engines are applied for educational, A remarkable feature of video games is their power to training, research and other purposes. motivate. Computer game features such as active Educational applications: Taking advantage of the participation, intrinsic and prompt feedback, challenging but favorable characteristics of computer games, existing multi- achievable goals, and a certain degree of uncertainty and player computer game engines can be utilized as a means open-endedness contribute to these games’ appeal. Recent for creating educational tools that have the potential for research has shown that game-based learning has similar enabling students to learn in an engaging manner. These characteristics as problem-based learning in that specific game-based educational simulations involve synchronous problem scenarios are placed within a playing framework student interaction through a computer network, and they [1]. Games have many characteristics of problem solving will benefit the students by stimulating the different activities, for instance the construction of a problem context, modalities of learning, i.e. visual, audio, read/write and multiple paths to a specific goal, collaboration in the case of kinesthetic [10]. For instance, a chemistry simulation was multiple players, unknown outcomes, etc. Furthermore, they implemented using the TV3D game engine [ 11 ] as a add elements of competition and chance. development platform [ 12 ]. Similarly, a game-based A game engine is the essential core of a computer game collaborative virtual environment that supports the early with reusable functional components (e.g. graphics

978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T4A-1 Session T4A stages of design in the context of architectural education Second Life and many other massively multiplayer was introduced [13]. online (MMO) games offer the ability to start in-world Training: Various groups have also explored training businesses that sell things like custom clothing, vehicles, systems based on computer game engines, stimulated by the housing and more for use inside of the game. What sets affordability of such systems in combination with the Second Life apart is the freedom to create and have open- ubiquity of powerful personal computers. For example, ended social interactions with all its members who pay a simulations of military scenarios [14],[15] were developed one-time fee. Second Life’s almost 14 million currently for training purposes. Similarly, the potential for using registered users [28] surpass other MMOs, such as World of multi-agent tactical simulations as training software was Warcraft, EverQuest and Ultima Online, just to name a few investigated [16], wherein the Unreal [17] game engine and [29]. The success of Second Life is probably based on the its associated main simulation servers were interfaced, thus fact that many industry observers feel that it offers the best enabling the use of common PCs as a low cost replacement platform for mixing social interaction, play and the to the expensive proprietary equipment used previously in opportunity to tackle serious issues, since the game is not such tactical simulations. Various computer game platforms restricted to a narrowly defined objective [30]. [ 18 ],[ 19 ] were used to develop virtual simulations of The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard accident scenarios in chemistry laboratories, stipulating that Law School and the Harvard Extension School [31] is a this approach is more effective than distributing safety virtual environment created in Second Life on an in-world regulations to the students in the traditional paper form. island. A course called “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Research and other: The Unreal game engine formed Public Opinion” [32] is the first class at Harvard University the basis for research aiming to achieve refinements of the and the Harvard Extension School to be offered in part in a human controller and robotic interface of urban search and virtual environment. The corresponding course video, rescue robots [20]. Several computer game engines were lecture and project materials are available for free in Second investigated as flexible, robust and inexpensive Life to anyone with an Internet connection. Students taking environments for exploring the development of human level the course meet weekly with their instructors and fellow artificial intelligence in complex environments [ 21 ]. students in Second Life for usual classroom activities as Software systems that are capable of adapting their well as innovative projects that take advantage of the large responses to the context of the attempted user task were amount of possibilities of the Second Life environment. implemented using a game engine [22]. In the open-source CyberOne represents an ongoing process of pedagogical CaveUT project [23], the Unreal game engine was used to innovation and experimentation, with inquiry into openness, enable immersive projection-based virtual reality new technologies and related policy, learning and social applications through displays in multi-screen enclosures, media. Furthermore, a wide spectrum of Web issues, which provide users with a high-performance, low-cost including governance, privacy, intellectual property, virtual reality alternative. antitrust, content control and electronic commerce is also explored. EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS As another example, Middletown Island was created in Second Life by the Center for Media Design [33] at Ball Recently, massive multiplayer online games such Second State University in Muncie, Indiana, for the freshman Life [24] (created by Linden Research, Inc. [25]) have composition course, which was taught as a virtual class. The become more than just virtual environments for chatting. focus of this class was to help students learn how to Second Life was programmed to be an open-ended research and write in a virtual setting. In the Second Life environment and features a high level of flexibility. It implementation of the course, the students sat in a circle, enables its users to customize their avatars as fantasy debated and communicated via a public instant messaging creatures and build almost anything they could imagine. An system. Then, the instructor printed the recorded dialogue as increasing number of organizations and institutions are classroom notes. As a semester project, the students built an using it to implement applications that have a purpose other exhibition area and invited other Second Life users to visit than providing for an entertaining pastime, and it has and review their work. Reportedly, in excess of 300 people developed into a platform used for educational, research and from around the world visited during a two-hour period and even therapeutic purposes. For instance, it became a place gave the students’ work an exposure far greater than would for business school students to test entrepreneurial talents. have ever been possible using conventional methods. In a program presented at the 2005 Supernova conference A virtual chemistry laboratory simulation was on emerging technologies and business implications [26], developed at Brigham Young University [ 34 ],[ 35 ] (see students of the Wharton School and conference attendees Figure 1). Thousands of test tubes holding molecular were immersed in Second Life and encouraged to start solutions were photographed. Then, working with video businesses, to advise some businesses already in existence game designers, a simulated laboratory environment was and to compete against each other. Elon University in North created that enables students to mix chemicals in virtual Carolina [27] is another business school that is employing beakers and observe the resulting chemical reactions. Since Second Life as a way of building and testing entrepreneurial its conception, the virtual chemistry laboratory has had skills. 978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T4A-2 Session T4A students at computer terminals around the country perform work is designed as the starting point of a thread of inquiries experiments that would be too costly or dangerous to into linking real-world and virtual learning environments perform at their local high schools. and exploring the resulting synergies. SecondReiff [41], a virtual extension of the campus of RWTH Aachen, offers the environments and tools through which students and faculty can communicate and work together productively in new ways. The project features three distinct, vertically stacked zones. A so-called “XXL Workbench” located at sea level enables the students to practice architectural design collaboratively in real time, upload necessary architectural drawings onto the grid and manipulate the topography (see Figure 3).

FIGURE 1 VIRTUAL CHEMISTRY LABORATORY [34]

“Cell Biology” [36], a project where students collect data from the cells of an onion root and use it to calculate the duration of each phase in the cells’ division, was FIGURE 3 developed at the University of Arizona. The science courses SECONDREIFF XXL WORKBENCH [42] offered by some online high schools draw on multiple Above this zone, reference images can be posted in a Internet sites that provide data and subsequently lead Media Center. Lastly, a General Communications Area students through an analysis. forms the top level, which is built upon the very same logic Similarly, a virtual pig dissection module was that is used in Second Life itself. This area is divided into a developed at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington mainland with project-specific areas and many islands [37] (see Figure 2). This tool was designed to help students claimed by individual students. Besides the immediately in preparing for tests and to offer a substitute for those visible differences to most other projects in Second Life, students who, for ethical or other reasons, object to working SecondReiff is based on another concept. While most with once-living specimens. With the click of a mouse, a Second Life locations limit their interactions to avatar-to- virtual scalpel can be used to lay the pig’s kidney open, and object relationships, SecondReiff offers tools and scripts its internal regions are highlighted by blinking labels. that actually link avatars to one another and expand the According to student comments, having enlarged available modes of communication and information highlighted images is useful, which is not possible in a exchange between them. Communication between the traditional school laboratory environment. avatars, formal presentations and the ability to actually collaborate in real time and on a large scale represent an environment with previously unimaginable productivity and technological possibilities. Based on Half-Life 2 [43 ], a first-person shooter computer game using the Source game engine, Garry's Mod (i.e. modification) [44] was developed, which represents a “physics sandbox” that allows the players to spawn objects, connect them with various constraints and thus create working systems that obey the laws of physics, such as a controllable model of a car (see Figure 4). Similarly, the Wire Modification project [ 45 ] to Garry’s Mod allows players to wire gates, sensors, inputs and outputs together in FIGURE 2 order to form working primitive computers or machine-like VIRTUAL PIG DISSECTION ON THE WEB [38] contraptions. The wires used to connect the electronic elements are energy beam models that act as a medium to Research on spaces and tools in real and virtual carry the output of one wired entity to an input of another. educational environments (WISE environments [ 39 ]) is The remaining electronic elements are programmed to being pursued at the RWTH Aachen in Germany [40]. This simulate the logic of their real-life counterparts. In

978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T4A-3 Session T4A conjunction with the Havok physics engine [46], this can be taught in the lecture component of the class and expressed used to control various mechanical processes with wire- general satisfaction with this laboratory approach [50]. The enabled constraints, special game functions or entities that results of the assessment study furthermore suggest that affect object parameters. game-based learning environments have the potential for developing into an educationally viable complement to traditional pedagogical tools and warrant further investigation.

TRAINING APPLICATIONS

An elaborate surgery simulator is currently being developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This simulator will allow surgeons to manipulate virtual human organs in real time, thus enabling them acquire crucial skills without using cadavers or risking human lives (see Figure 6). The ultimate goal of the project is to create a complete virtual human. Upon completion of the required giant database of virtual FIGURE 4 human anatomy models, the simulation would look and feel CONTROLLABLE MODEL OF A CAR CREATED USING GARRY’S MOD [47] real and allow the user to “touch” and manipulate it using haptic interfaces such as SensAble Technologies’ Phantom Garry’s Mod and Wire Modification inspired the devices [51] or Meta Motion’s CyberGlove [52]. development of a virtual laboratory environment at Stevens Institute of Technology. This system enables the students to assemble an experimental apparatus (an industrial emulator system used to demonstrate the concepts of gears, belts, inertia of machine elements, rigid vs. flexible machines) within the game-based virtual laboratory environment [48] (see Figure 5) and subsequently to either carry out experimental procedures using a remotely accessible actual experimental setup of the industrial emulator system or perform virtual experiments using a software implementation of the experimental setup [49].

FIGURE 6 VIRTUAL MODEL OF SURGICALLY CUTTING A KIDNEY [53]

Another human simulation currently under development is HumanSimTM [ 54 ] (see Figure 7). This system is being created based on the Unreal game engine by integrating it with a high-fidelity physiologic- pharmacologic model for experiential learning. The FIGURE 5 simulation scenarios are being programmed so as to VIRTUAL STUDENT LABORATORY emphasize learning-by-doing and to provide training-to- proficiency in rare, complicated or otherwise error-prone Using the approach of combining the game-based tasks. Also, two instructional 3D simulations for heart laboratory environment with remote and virtual surgery procedures were developed, which demonstrated experiments, the students can repeat the laboratory new treatments for atrial fibrillation in the heart. The first experiments more than once at their own pace as opposed to animation was an open chest procedure while the second having to complete the laboratory procedure during the demonstrated laparoscopic access in a closed chest setting. allotted time as in the traditional hands-on mode. The assessment data obtained from a pilot implementation into a junior-level mechanical engineering course indicated that the students improved their knowledge of the concepts 978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T4A-4 Session T4A cloud the vision (see Figure 8). In this type of exposure therapy, the patients are asked to confront their memories of a trauma by imagining and recounting it in detail. The immersive features and enhancements of virtual reality systems make this exposure therapy more effective than other treatments [56].

FIGURE 8 FIGURE 7 VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT AND PROJECTED SIMULATION IMAGES [57] HEALTHCARE TRAINING SIMULATION HUMANSIMTM [54] Second Life has also been used by psychologists to help So far, the few surgical simulators currently on the abused children rediscover social skills. Similarly, a project market are not very popular yet with the medical called Live2give [58] was undertaken by nine adults with community, largely because of their lack of realism and cerebral palsy. The nine group members share a single since they rely mostly on simplistic graphics for Second Life avatar. The objective of this project is to representing human tissue. Furthermore, the haptics provide its members with a forum, in which they can share technology used to let surgeons “feel” their actions is not in the everyday personal interactions that most people take mature enough yet for simulating interactions with soft for granted and get to experience being around other people biological tissue. without being judged. Another project that has its own in- A virtual training space in Second Life named world island in Second Life is Brigadoon [ 59 ], an Play2Train was designed as part of Idaho’s Bioterrorism innovative online community for people dealing with Awareness and Preparedness Program [55 ]. This virtual Asperger's Syndrome and Autism. In the same way as environment spreads over two Second Life islands, whereby Live2give, this project’s goal is to try out the social one island hosts a virtual town and the other a virtual interactions that for people with these medical conditions hospital. It represents a virtual world designed specifically are so hard to experience in the real world. to meet the distinctive training needs of the professionals who will be on the scene in the event of any large-scale CONCLUSIONS disaster. Play2Train provides opportunities for training through interactive role playing and is the foundation of Several applications of commercially available computer what would be the emergency preparedness educational game engines for implementing virtual education and virtual environment. With this development, training health training environments were reviewed. While these systems care professionals and emergency responders for sudden are still in the early stages of their development, they have large-scale catastrophes such as natural disasters, already provided us with glimpses into their tremendous bioterrorism attacks and outbreaks of infectious diseases has potential for creating effective learning and training taken on a new life. experiences in various fields, including education and student laboratories, medicine as well as disaster response OTHER APPLICATIONS and military training.

Computer games have also found a number of therapeutic ACKNOWLEDGMENT and social applications. For example, a simulation designed to employ computer game technology for lessening war This work was supported by NSF Grant No. 0326309. This trauma is available to a small number of patients at several support is gratefully acknowledged. sites, including the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Manhattan, the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, the REFERENCES Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and Walter [1] Barrows, H. S. & Tamblyn, R. M., (1980), “Problem-based learning: Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. This simulation an approach to medical education”, Springer Series on Medical was created to treat Iraq war veterans who are suffering Education, vol. 1, New York, Springer. from post-traumatic stress disorder. The simulation uses a [2] World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment; variety of images and sounds, such as a Blackhawk http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml. [3] Everquest II by SONY Entertainment; helicopter circling overhead, insurgents hiding on a roof and http://everquest2.station.sony.com/. launching a rocket-propelled grenade, the animation of a [4] Second Life by Linden Research, Inc.; http://secondlife.com/. violently shaking ground, and plumes of black smoke that

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