SBIR Phase II: A Systematic Approach, Language and Platform for Building and Distributing Interactive Educational Games in Operations Management

这个SBIR第二阶段项目应该会更多地采用经过教学验证的教育游戏，以促进保留和有效使用所教授的和与管理组织相关的商业概念。初创企业、营利性和非营利性公司都需要能够在复杂和不确定性面前做出有效决策的管理者。因此，对社会来说，最重要的是，下一代企业领导人必须配备相关的框架和工具，以补充传统的教学方法，并使他们能够在工作中有效地使用知识。因此，该项目有可能增强美国劳动力的生产力和创新性，这将改善现有的业务成果，从而推动美国的就业和经济增长。商业运营的改善还将总体上带来更有利可图的业务，并可能为美国政府带来更多的税收收入。最终在186亿美元的全球基于游戏的学习市场中向第三方作者开放GDL将以更低的成本加速游戏创新和在其他商业和工程学科中的使用，这既将提高STEM劳动力的效率，又将鼓励游戏开发市场中更多的经济活动。该项目基于三个区别于其他解决方案的创新：(1)科学的游戏研究和开发(GR&amp；D)过程设计包含教学学习目标的游戏；(2)游戏设计语言(GDL)加速实现自动验证的游戏概念，领域特定的语言，同时消除运行时错误；以及(3)创新的网络游戏分发平台(GDP)最大限度地减少了在课堂上设置和管理游戏的工作量。使用诸如Java脚本等语言开发典型的教育游戏非常耗时，需要专业的软件工程师，并且需要调试运行时错误，而在课堂上使用游戏技术会扰乱指令流。因此，对于非专业程序员和教授等游戏管理员来说，这样的挑战是令人望而却步的。为了缓解运行时错误的问题，该项目采用了视频游戏开发方法，这些方法通常使用基于非图灵完全计算模型的特定于域的语言来解决这些问题。使用GDL创建的游戏将支持快速的新游戏开发，并具有有保证的技术质量水平，使教授能够在教学过程中专注于教学相关性。主要的技术障碍是调整这些方法，使GDL能够表达在科学研发过程中构思的运营管理(OM)游戏，并可以通过GDP进行游戏，从而实现无缝的职业整合。

This SBIR Phase II project should increase the adoption of pedagogically validated educational games that facilitate retention and effective use of business concepts taught and relevant to managing organizations. Start-ups, for-profit and nonprofit companies all need managers who can make effective decisions in the face of complexity and uncertainty. It is of the utmost importance to society, therefore, that the next generation of business leaders is equipped with relevant frameworks and tools that supplement traditional teaching methods and enable effective use of knowledge on the job. Hence, this project has the potential to empower the U.S. workforce to be more productive and innovative, which will improve existing business outcomes and thus drive U.S. job and economic growth. Improved business operations will also lead to more profitable business in general and potentially larger tax revenues for the U.S. government. Eventually opening the GDL to third-party authors in the $18.6 billion global game-based learning market will accelerate game innovation and usage in other business and engineering disciplines at a lower cost, which will both enhance the effectiveness of the STEM workforce and encourage more economic activity in the game development market.This project is based on three innovations that differentiate this solution from others: (1) a scientific Game Research and Development (GR&D) process designs games containing pedagogical learning objectives; (2) a Game Design Language (GDL) accelerates implementation of game concepts as automatically validated, domain specific language while eliminating runtime errors; and (3) an innovative web Game Distribution Platform (GDP) minimizes the effort to setup and manage games in the classroom. Typical educational game development in languages such as JavaScript is time-consuming, involves professional software engineers and requires debugging of runtime errors, while usage of game technology in the class is disruptive to the flow of instruction. Such challenges are therefore prohibitive for non-professional programmers and game administrators such as professors. To mitigate the problem of runtime errors, this project employs methods of video game development, which typically use domain-specific languages based on non-Turing-complete models of computation to solve these issues. Games created with GDL will enable rapid new game development and have a guaranteed level of technical quality, allowing professors to focus on pedagogical relevance during instruction. The main technical hurdle is to tailor these methods to result in GDL capable of expressing the Operations Management (OM) games conceived during the scientific GR&D process and playable via the GDP that enables seamless class integration.