Assistant Teaching Professor University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois, United States
Introduction: Education in the engineering space is rapidly evolving- shifting from a focus on a passive lecture based format into a more active learning environment which allows students to learn though doing [1, 2] - different project-based learning assignments, different in class presentations, and different game based learning tools [3, 4, 5, 6]. There are countless benefits to increasing student engagement, including but not limited to student participation and content retention, as well as higher levels of belonging and student retention within the major [7, 8, 2] which has even been explored in different departments such as Electrical Engineering [9, 2]. We describe here some examples of game based learning platforms for our fellow educators to draw from in developing their own game based learning modules. Within this scaffold, we use MATLAB to try to create engaging and creative methods of increasing accessibility within the core curriculum, to lower the barrier of entry and also lower the apprehension that students may feel about the curriculum and the content.
Materials and
Methods: Here we describe the creation and implementation of a series of game based learning modules within different undergraduate core courses at two different institutions, in a variety of courses between Electrical and Biomedical/Bioengineering. Topics that are covered within these core courses include Fourier Transforms, Convolution, Laplace Transforms, Filtering, Stability, Conditional Statements in coding, as well as Loops in coding. Many of these concepts have a great deal of apprehension as assessed by students using a entry poll, and reassessed by poll at the finality of the course in the same manner to test their comfort level after the games. Students were given opportunities to implement their mastery in a series of open-ended projects, which allowed them to play with the concepts further.
Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: Results and
Discussion: Within the engineering curriculum, many core courses have some of the lowest approval as it is one of the hardest and more intimidating courses in the college. In order to allow students to lower the apprehension, and better improve retention in both content and in the major, we need to improve the ways that we educate our students. In order to do so, we have created games that use familiar concepts to build around the new content that they don’t know yet. Some of these games revolve around puzzles such as word searches, scrambles or finds, or numerical ones, such as sudokus, while others involve a more structured environment such as a murder mystery or a code based puzzle. These can be coupled with other active learning techniques and open-ended projects to further assist universal design of these puzzles. From testimony and survey data-in the hands on projects, the students seemed excited to explore the limits of their knowledge. The students also provided testimony regarding the different projects that they created and what they enjoyed about it. We observed that overall the game-based learning achieved the purpose of lower the apprehension in class, but further assessment will be done to verify that belonging, and content retention was improved.
Conclusion: Through the creation of these game-based learning modules, we aim to create alternative methods to teach core curriculum concepts that can be more accessible for student populations that will be a more universal design that previous iterations. Through making the games humorous, we can maintain the rigor of the curriculum, while making it less intimidating, which can help us with retention and belonging of the students, and especially those who may feel othered from other factors.
Acknowledgements (Optional): Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Bucknell University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for their assistance with the design of these modules especially Dr. Karlo Malaga, Dr. Dan Cavanagh, and Dr. Jacob Nickle.
