Session W2C
Designing and Using an On-line Game
to Teach Engineering
John M. Pfotenhauer, David J. Gagnon, Michael J. Litzkow, and Christopher C. Blakesley
University of Wisconsin – Madison, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract - We have developed an on-line game, built
around a simple simulator, as an innovative approach to
mitigate the time and budget constraints that hinder the
development of engineering expertise within a typical
one-semester course. Students playing the game, as an
alternative to calculation-based homework sets, develop
a rich empirical understanding of the engineering
principles of interest. A variety of gaming features such
as real-life role-playing, competition, and graphically
amplified results transform a Matlab-based simulator
from being merely a sophisticated calculator into a
learning tool that motivates exploration and provides
rapid meaningful feedback to real-life engineering design
challenges. As with many engineering projects, solutions
are obtained by adjusting a variety of interrelated
parameters within a set of physical constraints to satisfy
a threshold condition. A comparison of a player’s
solution to an optimal solution provides a quantitative
mechanism through which feedback can be easily
provided, a competitive factor for either personal
accomplishment or group bragging rights, and
motivation to pursue the optimal solution. Decisions
required during the game engage learning at the
advanced level of comparisons and analyses. A digital
record of the students’ interaction with the game enables
an innovative mechanism for learning assessment.
Index terms – on-line game, learning tool, assessment.
INTRODUCTION
In a variety of engineering fields where the end goal of
education is to produce technically competent designers,
learning is frequently best accomplished in settings where
hands-on experience compliments theory and modeling.
However, the time and budget required to develop such
expert design capabilities usually far exceed what is
available for a typical one-semester course. Furthermore,
the design training that can be accomplished through the
standard lecture / homework format significantly lacks the
skill set that is gained by interactive experience. In order to
mitigate these constraints for a course on Cryogenic
Engineering taught at UW-Madison, we have developed an
educational game that enables students to interactively
explore the impact of temperature dependent properties on
the design of real-world cryogenic applications. The game
also wonderfully addresses multiple pedagogical goals. In
the following pages we describe the game’s key features,
how it richly satisfies multiple educational objectives, and an
innovative mechanism that allows the instructor to
quantitatively measure the game’s impact on a student’s
progress from novice to expert.
GAME FEATURES
The instructional game, named “Cool-it,” teaches principles
of cryogenic design by assigning the student/player to the
role of a cryogenic consultant. He or she chooses from a
selection of real-life cryogenic challenges in the fields of
space, medicine, communications, electric power, or
defense, and receives payment for developing a design that
satisfies a set of defined constraints. Feedback is provided
in the form of a quantitative comparison of the student’s
design to an optimal solution.
Cool-it is built around a simple Matlab-based simulator
that captures the key physical mechanism of interest and
incorporates simplifying constraints on non-essential factors.
For example, in the game’s first level, the topical focus on
temperature dependent conductive heat transfer ignores
complications associated with radiative or convective heat
transfer. Through our conscious decision to build in
simulation features as we further develop the game, we have
avoided the extensive, and possibly distracting, effort of
constructing a powerful general simulator. In addition, the
simplicity has enabled us to maintain focus on the
pedagogical objectives for each level.
Intentional
scaffolding is therefore a natural result of our approach, and
is a key consideration in the level design. Although the
objectives for multiple levels have been defined, to date the
game provides a working prototype for the first level only.
In the first level, the cryogenic consultant encounters a
set of jobs that each require him/her to select a combination
of a cryogenic refrigerator (cryocooler) and a support
structure so that the object of interest can be cooled to a
defined steady state temperature. Both the refrigerator and
the support structure are connected to the object, but while
the refrigerator extracts heat from the object, the support
structure, with its connection at the other end to a warm
enclosure, conducts heat to the object. The consultant can
choose from a set of 40 different materials for the support
structure, and by adjusting sliders can change the length and
cross sectional area of the structural piece(s). An additional
constraint imposed on the structural support, viz. that it be
sufficiently strong to support the mass of the cooled object,
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October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
W2C-1
Session W2C
FIGURE 1. SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE OF COOL-IT
creates an optimization problem for the designer. Four
different cryocooler sizes can be selected, but in some cases
the electric power consumed by the cooler (and proportional
to its cooling capacity) is also constrained. Solutions are
obtained by satisfying the strength, temperature, and electric
power constraints, but the various structural material
possibilities allow a wide range of associated expense, so
that the set of possible solutions encompasses a wide range
of system cost. Thus, while multiple satisfactory solutions
may be obtained, only one will define a minimum cost to the
company for whom the consultant is working.
Figure 1 illustrates the software architecture of our
game. Students interact with a Flash client running in their
browser. This allows students to access the game from any
platform that supports a browser with a flash plug-in. The
server is a DotNet Web Service implementing the SOAP
protocol. Since all communications between the server and
client use a standard, technology-neutral protocol, it's
possible to create other clients that use the same server.
During development we used a simple Windows Desktop
client to help us finalize all the server functions. Later we
were able to independently develop the Flash client which
provides a nicer, better looking, and platform neutral
interface for our students. The web service contains a
Matlab module that does all the hard work of simulating the
cryo-system under study. Finally, the web service uses a
database to record all the student's choices as they are
solving a problem. Later we can analyze the student's
behavior to discover how their approach to these problems
changes as they gain expertise. We "sanitize" this data so
that the instructor does not see identifying information about
his students when studying their problem solving behavior.
Students are therefore able to play with the game without
fear of affecting their grade (except indirectly through
gaining a better understanding of the material).
A number of gaming features have been incorporated in
Cool-it. For example, the consultant-identity assigned to the
student allows them to inhabit a role that would otherwise be
inaccessible [1], and the earnings they accumulate as they
complete multiple tasks represent a score that can provide
both self-motivation and group bragging rights. The
feedback immediately following a submitted solution that
quantitatively compares it to an optimal solution provides an
especially compelling enticement for further play. Active
meters, sliders, graphs, and schematics populate the working
space of the game and create an inviting environment for
engineers. Narrated animations introduce the various job
challenges and equipment descriptions, further enhancing
the real-world feel of the game. Additional animations or
‘cut scenes’ with appropriate sound effects dramatically
display the result of the submitted designs, for both
successful and failed solutions.
One of the most valuable aspects of game, both for
pedagogical reasons and for the game-like feel, is the
requirement to balance competing factors in order to obtain a
solution. Multiple constraints that introduce competing
motivations for increasing one parameter vs. another are a
reality in most engineering design projects, and provide the
possibility to identify an optimal design. In Cool-it, the
optimization parameter is (minimal) cost. A vector whose
elements are defined by the values of the ‘n’ adjustable
parameters in a solution allows the game internally to
calculate an n-dimensional distance between the optimal
solution and that submitted by the student. This ‘distance’
provides the basis for the immediate quantitative feedback
given to a player upon submitting a solution. In addition, the
difference between the submitted and optimal solution in
any of the specific adjustable parameters enables
constructive feedback to the players regarding which
parameter they could most improve. This approach restricts
the number of feedback messages to a finite set.
Furthermore, the feedback provides ample direction and
motivation for subsequent careful thought, thereby
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October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
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Session W2C
FIGURE 2. INTERACTIVE GRAPHING TOOLS ENABLING STUDENTS TO EXPLORE THERMAL PROPERTIES OF MATERIAL OPTIONS
enhancing the educational value of the game. A further
incentive for improved solutions is included in the form of
scaled bonus payments beyond the base level awarded for
solutions that simply satisfy the defined criteria. The
additional incremental payments are provided if subsequent
solutions are closer to the optimal one, and the maximum
accumulated payment for a specific job (regardless of how
many times it is solved) approaches that awarded for the
optimal solution.
PEDAGOGICAL OBJECTIVES
One of the primary features of the game environment that
motivated our development of Cool-it is its recognized
ability to capture the attention of a player and provide an
enjoyable experience in which they may explore. Our
objective for the cryogenic engineering course is to bring
students into a concentrated interaction with the temperature
dependence of material properties as temperatures are
lowered into the cryogenic range, and to enable them to
recognize the significance of their design decisions in real
world applications.
In a broader sense, the game
environment allows a concentrated interaction with the key
physical features built into the simulator, and accelerates the
progression from novice to expert. By creating a player
experience where the classroom information about the topic
is required in context of an interactive experience, the
student are more likely to retain and make personal meaning
from that information [2]. After repeated ‘play’ with the
physical processes, the students’ perspectives move toward
that possessed by an expert [3]. Rather than randomly
varying the different parameters in the hopes of stumbling
upon a good idea, the student develops a sequence of steps
that direct them toward an optimal solution. For example, in
the first level of Cool-it, one learns after repeated play that
fixing the cross sectional area of the support for a chosen
material to accommodate the required stress, enables one to
then focus on the length and cooler.
The game environment also allows students to rapidly
explore the space of variables and visually observe not only
the specific impact of changes, but also the trends in the
response of a desired parameter as variations are made in
other adjustable parameters. In Cool-it, students may
quickly explore through a group of 40 different support-strut
materials to find those that provide the lowest heat leak and
cost. When the same group is carefully perused through the
interactive graphing tools (see Figure 2), students can
graphically explore the temperature dependent form of each
material’s thermal conductivity, recognize similarities
among sub-groups of materials, and observe the difference
between local and integrated values of thermal conductivity.
This trains the player to see the attributes of the different
materials through the professional vision [4] that would
normally only be created over years of practice. Students
may also graphically observe how the thermal balance
between the temperature dependent cooling power and the
material and geometry dependent strut heat leak determine
the operating temperature. The comparative thought
processes, over multiple ranges of multiple variables, brings
the student to one of the higher levels of learning identified
in Bloom’s taxonomy [5]. It also introduces them to the
same processes used by real-world consultants in the field of
cryogenic engineering, with the added advantage of
interactive graphics to explore the temperature dependent
material properties. Indeed, because the game draws on a
material properties database maintained by the National
Institutes of Standards and Technology [6] the game could
be used for real-world analyses.
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October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
W2C-3
Session W2C
Although the students may not be initially aware of the
fact, the trends with which they become acquainted through
playing the game can also be expressed in the form of the
same mathematical equations that are typically used to
introduce the topic in a lecture / homework format. Through
the game, students have the opportunity to empirically learn
the associated physical reality in the same way it was
originally identified. Connecting the empirically realized
relationship with the physical equation, wherever that occurs
during interaction with the game, provides a rich exposure to
the physical law. The game also enables exploration into
auxiliary relationships that may not be highlighted due to
time constraints in a standard semester course.
Through the various consultant jobs, or challenges,
students are exposed to contemporary examples of cryogenic
engineering applications. The situations are extracted from
recent projects in the industrial, governmental, and academic
settings. The game therefore provides relevance to the
subject material, both in terms of its technical application
and its impact on society. Students can also safely observe
the impact of design decisions, and the associated costs
whether in dollars alone for successful solutions, or also in
lost equipment (or lives) for unsuccessful solutions.
As described in How People Learn [3], experts approach
problems differently than beginners, and because of their
ability to quickly recognize the crucial features in a problem,
find their way to a solution in an efficient method. In our
quest to train students to develop expert design skills, we
have therefore directed our attention at the methods students
use to solve problem types. To this curiosity, the on-line
game provides a significant advantage over the standard
calculation based homework exercise, because the individual
interactions of each player with the computer (keystrokes,
mouse clicks, etc.) can be recorded throughout their play of
the game. The record of the interactions provides a
quantitative mechanism to observe the path of both the
individual decisions and the overall learning that occur while
a student plays the game. Furthermore, the pattern of
interactions taken by an expert solving the same problem
provides a visual standard against which that generated by
the student can be compared. Patterns can be observed in the
sequence of the specific variables that are adjusted, the
number of changes made to a variable, the time spent from
mouse-click to mouse-click, and in a broader sense in terms
of the evolution of decision sequences that are recorded with
each subsequent play of the game.
Figures 3 and 4 (below) respectively display the record
ASSESSMENT
FIGURE 3. NOVICE INTERACTION WITH COOL-IT
FIGURE 4. EXPERT INTERACTION WITH COOL-IT
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October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
W2C-4
Session W2C
of interactions from a student playing the game for the first
time (without any instruction), and that of an expert (one of
the authors) playing the same part of the game. The bottom
four parameters represent independent variables that can be
manipulated while the top two represent dependent variables
for which constraints must be satisfied for a successful
solution. Each of the markers on the graphs represent the
values of the various parameters at a time when some
change was made, to either that or another parameter.
Changes occur for example when the player moves a slider,
enters a numeric value, or chooses a new selection from a
drop down menu. Each action within the game-play is time
stamped, and the resulting data from the game is saved as a
spreadsheet of values, with time in the first column and each
of the independent and dependent variables in other
columns. Figures 3 and 4 thus display the correlation
between the time column and each of the other columns in
the spreadsheet for the respective game of the novice and the
expert.
A number of significant features stand out in the
comparison. First of all, the total expert play occurs over a
very short time compared to the novice. Secondly, one can
recognize a very deliberate and sequential pattern to the
expert path, while the novice play progresses from initially
random changes (< 4 min) to a methodical search through
material choices - one of the key variables (4 min - 5 min),
followed by relatively focused explorations with the
remaining cooler, area and length variables to a solution.
The gap in activity visible between 5 and 11 seconds reflects
a period where the student left the game to work on another
assignment. In a later conversation with the student, they
explained that it is frequently their habit to leave a problem
for a time, work on other matters, and return with a fresh
view. In this case, the short break appears to have been
beneficial as the subsequent temperature developments
tended in a monotonic fashion towards the required goal,
whereas the previous results were quite scattered.
Even in this first encounter with the game, some
development toward an expert approach to the challenge is
visible in the novice actions. The student begins to organize
the information, and develops a sequential approach through
the multiple variables to the solution. Although the expert
play occurs over a much shorter time span, a similar start
through the variable is visible, that is, he also begins with the
material choice before progressing through the area, length,
and cooler options to a final solution.
The record captured in the student play shown in Figure
3 represents initial results of our assessment study. Further
measurements with the same and additional students are
envisioned, and are expected to provide a rich display of the
learning process occurring in the game. For example, during
the first encounter, the student did not yet recognize the
significance of minimizing the cross sectional area (up to the
strength constraint) and maximizing the strut length. The
record of the same student subsequently interacting with
other level-1 challenges does reveal a much quicker
convergence on valid solutions, and a movement toward
expert-like behavior. The student observed, empirically, the
thermal benefit of small cross section and long length for the
support strut, but driven by feedback regarding cost, also
recognized the value of a smaller overall strut volume.
CONCLUSION
On-line games that feature the optimization type ‘play’
characteristic of many engineering design problems, provide
an engaging tool that can successfully guide a student from
novice to expert-like behavior. In the game Cool-it, we have
used a combination of a simple Matlab-based simulator, a
platform independent architecture, multiple attractive game
features, and an innovative tracking mechanism to build a
learning tool that teaches principles of cryogenic design,
mitigates the time and budget constraints associated with a
standard lecture-based course, and provides a rich tool for
assessment analysis.
REFERENCES
1. Schaffer, D.W., Squire, K.R., Halverson, R., and Gee, J.P., “Video
Games
and
the
Future
of
Learning,”
http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/gappspaper1.pdf, 2004.
2. Gee, J.P. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and
Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
3. Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., Cocking, R.R., Donovan, M.S., and
Pellegrino, J.W., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2000, pp. 31-50.
4. Jenkins, H., & Squire, K.D. “Harnessing the power of games in
education,” Insight, 3(1), 2004, pp. 5-33.
5. Bloom, B.S., (ed.) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The
Classification of Educational Goals Susan Fauer Company, Inc. 1956,
pp. 201-207.
6. NIST
Cryogenics
Group
material
properties
web
site:
http://www.cryogenics.nist.gov/MPropsMAY/material%20properties.ht
m
AUTHOR INFORMATION
John M. Pfotenhauer
Professor, Departments of
Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Physics,
University of Wisconsin – Madison. 1500 Engineering
Drive, Madison, WI 53706. [email protected]
David J. Gagnon
Information Process Consultant,
Academic Technology, Division of Information Technology,
University of Wisconsin – Madison. 1401 University
Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. [email protected]
Michael J. Litzkow Information Process Consultant,
Computer Aided Engineering, Department of Engineering
Physics, University of Wisconsin – Madison. 1410
Engineering
Drive,
Madison,
WI
53706.
[email protected]
Christopher C. Blakesley Project Assistant, Academic
Technology, Division of Information Technology,
University of Wisconsin – Madison. 1401 University
Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. [email protected]
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October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
W2C-5