Mixed Reality and Mobile Gaming for 21st Century Engineering Education

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Recent weather extremes, e.g., Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, have shown the consequences of the combination of a deteriorating infrastructure and a citizenry that is unprepared to deal with natural disasters of this scale. Undergraduate students in geotechnical engineering need realistic experience that enables them to understand and process the risks inherent in flood-protection design. Because games enable people to experience the unfamiliar in a virtual world and to experiment and fail in multiple ways without the consequences that occur in the real world, they are an excellent vehicle for learning about design in a high-risk environment. The research team will develop and implement a transferable and scalable Mixed Reality and Mobile (MR&M) Educational Game, "Geo Explorer," that can be integrated with traditional geotechnical engineering education. It will be tested and implemented in existing geotechnical engineering courses at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Southern Methodist University, Manhattan College and California State University, Fullerton. The project will 1) develop a new MR&M game focused on flood-protection design and field testing that includes real-time game-embedded tools to monitor student progress toward learning geotechnical engineering subjects; 2) develop and implement a course module, which integrates the MR&M gaming environment into geotechnical course curricula and will include actual lab testing, virtual field testing, theoretical system design and virtual practical experience; 3) develop and implement a hybrid (face-to-face and online) dissemination model for expanding the use of the gaming environment to geotechnical engineering educators; and 4) evaluate the project effectiveness at accomplishing the first three goals.