Video game for enhancing learning in Digital Systems courses Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • In today's world, video games have become an essential part of children's culture. The emergence of the "Gamer Generation" presents interesting challenges to educators. Traditional teaching methods and tools have clearly not had the same success as they had in the past. It has become apparent that our instructional methods and tools need to take into account the changing profile of students entering our schools and colleges. This paper reports on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Combined Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) project at Texas A&M University (TAMU) which entailed the development of a prototype implementation of a video game to demonstrate its potential and identify needs for revisions and future design prescription. The video game will be integrated with currently used instructional techniques in Digital Systems courses. The prototype was designed, developed, and tested on students enrolled in Digital Systems courses. The prototype includes a 3D and a 2D environment. The 3D environment provides a game world in which the player, using a first person view, navigates through a series of obstacles. The 2D digital circuit design module provides learning exercises that teach sum-of-products logic design concepts with truth tables. A preliminary study of the 2D digital circuit design module was performed in December 2007. Both a usability study and a pilot test of the full prototype were performed in April 2008. The purpose of the studies was to get feedback from students on various features and graphics of the prototype and to evaluate the effectiveness of the prototype in teaching. The students were excited about the possibility of using a video game for learning in ECE courses. Details about the prototype and the evaluation results from the study will be presented in this paper. The game will be further developed and evaluated over the next few years. American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.

published proceedings

  • ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings

author list (cited authors)

  • Butler-Purry, K., Srinivasan, V., & Pedersen, S.

complete list of authors

  • Butler-Purry, K||Srinivasan, V||Pedersen, S

publication date

  • January 2009