Teaching Modeling through Games

Stephen Timothy Cooney

January 2009

Educational Gaming, Brian Malloy

Clemson University  

Abstract:   

 To develop a game-prototype, functional on the Nintendo DS, that teaches player's the fundamentals of various mathematical operations responsible for modern graphics and physics applications. The program will explore mathematical topics such as: Algebra, Geometry, Linear Algebra, Calculus and Trigonometry.  

Goal Breakdown:

• Inform the player on the techniques important for graphics & physics modeling.
• Engage the player to interactively participate in each lesson through miniature puzzles.
• Free the player to explore individual ideas and see their effects.
• Provide a framework for developing engaging educational games.

Also, a more personal goal:

• Respect the player's intelligence and integrity.

 
Milestones:

• Design & Technical Documentation
• Topic finalization
• Puzzle design
• Interface design
• Educational design
• designing user and unit tests to analyze the educational and informative success of the project. Breaking down game elements as different forms of learning.
• Presentation of game design and educational goals, power-point breakdown.
• Alpha Prototype
• Functional HUD
• Functional Puzzles
• DS Compatible
• Beta Prototype
• All puzzles implemented; puzzle lockdown
• Prototype Final (Gold)
• HUD lockdown
• All graphics & resources final and implemented
• Presentation of final game including power-point and demonstration. A group q/a on how to advance the prototype to a releasable tool.

 

Extra milestones:

• User and Unit Tests
• Engage players in tests to determine the successes and failures of the prototype
• Postmortem, Project Analysis
• Development postmortem
• DS technicalities
• Educational evaluation
• Games and prototype as a teaching platform
• Nintendo DS as a teaching platform
• Alternate Presentation. Alternate to the gold presentation. If time allows and the user/unit tests go through, a presentation of the game and the results of the tests.

 

Game Concept: 
To be fleshed out in the "Design & Technical Documentation"

• A series of puzzles, built to grow the player's knowledge of the proposed topics over a period of game levels.
• These puzzles could be of multiple styles, one involving solving a rhyme about the dot product, and another doing matrix multiplication by dragging lines over columns and rows in the order of multiplication.
• All of the puzzles would be logic based.
• Each puzzle would be coupled with a brief informative presentation of the current topic that provides the player with just enough information to successfully piece the puzzle together.
• Conceptually, a final product would have a reward system that would track the player's successes and give time-worthy rewards.
• These rewards could be fun-oriented mini games related to the subject matter.
• Ex: Pong as a reward for completing vector reflection mathematics (critical to pong functionality).

 
Personal Purpose: aka. What this all means to me 
 
    The idea for this project came about from a number of factors. Primarily, I've used the proposed mathematics for the majority of my computer science work and I've always thought a fun game based on strengthening these skills would be beneficial not only to new students, but to myself. I think that engaging people in the action-consequence of various mathematics that it will help them understand the use and theory. The DS is a great platform because it is portable and fairly common. 
 
    I'm interested equally in the design and implementation of this project. I'm aware that not everything I want to implement will have a chance to get in, but I think that laying the framework and sorting out design now leaves room for further development in the future. I also see it as an opportunity to expand my perspective on methodologies for creating learning environments. The implementation of the DS is in many ways specific and universal. Portable computing devices are becoming more and more common. The DS finds its way into the hands of people around the world, and phones (much like the iPhone) are growing in computing power and interactive capabilities. A successful demonstration on the DS of this game concept could be expanded to many mobile markets.