Can gaming provide enough context to improve knowledge integration and retention in engineering freshmen? Developing a computer game for industrial engineering

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The objective of this IEECI proposal in engineering education research is to develop, deploy, and assess a serious virtual-world role playing game in which freshmen industrial engineering (IE) students will tackle real-world problems typical of what they may face after graduation. Students will interact with a virtual world where IE techniques will be applied to make improvements in a factory, bank, hospital, or amusement park for example. This learning tool will be assessed in terms of improved retention, interest, and motivation of freshman IE students, as well as support of learning in context, improved student understanding of core concepts, and improved problem-solving skills in complex unstructured problems. Many game development experts agree that models are needed for developing learning games that take advantage of the strengths of both the educational and gaming worlds.Increasing the number of engineering graduates qualified to deal with open-ended real-world problems is essential to the economic health and vitality of the nation. Providing appropriate experience of this sort has been a challenge to undergraduate engineering education, and a common barrier to retention has been a lack of student understanding of how the skills taught in the classroom are relevant to the ?real-world.? The proposed research on the development of an educational tool in the form of a role playing game will test how serious games may address these issues and also provide a resource and a model for other engineering disciplines and programs. Although simulations and games are used for personnel training in industry and the military, and in more informal settings as entertainment, games have not been used and tested as an undergraduate engineering educational tool. The programming code of this game will be released as an online open- source project. This will be an open invitation for current and prospective students to use the game and for collaborators around the globe to participate in continued development.