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

这个SBIR第一阶段项目将创建一个基于网络的平台，用于为信息和运营管理开发和分发互动的、支持移动的游戏。这些游戏中的每一个都将通过让学生参与持续不到一堂课的简短的、基于回合的互动来说明一到两个基本的学术概念。最近的研究(Burke，2012；Sitzmann，2011)表明，关注关键概念并向玩家提供即时反馈的教育游戏有助于学生理解、学习和内化基本的学术概念。该项目解决了教授们报告的将游戏纳入教学的普遍障碍，包括在课堂环境中既相关又有技术能力的游戏的稀缺性。拟议项目的更广泛影响是更多地采用经教学和学术验证的教育游戏，以促进保留和有效使用与管理组织有关的业务概念。因此，这项提议有可能增强劳动力的生产力和创新性，从而推动美国经济增长。此外，该平台最终向各种第三方作者开放，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，这将提高更广泛的STEM劳动力的效率。该项目将使用自动验证语言来消除多人运营管理游戏中的运行时错误，该游戏将使用科学的游戏研究与开发(GR&amp；D)流程设计，以便在网络分发平台上托管。调试运行时错误对非专业程序员(如教授)来说是一个特别的挑战。通过减少运行时错误，可以在编译时验证程序的正确性。因此，所有用游戏描述语言(GDL)项目创建的游戏都将具有技术质量和稳定性的保证水平，使教授们能够专注于游戏的教学相关性而不是技术稳定性。为了缓解运行时错误的问题，该项目采用了主流视频游戏开发方法，这在很大程度上依赖非专业程序员编写故事情节。主要的技术障碍是，这些方法必须量身定做，以产生能够表达在研发过程中构思的运营管理游戏范围的自动验证语言。拟议研发的目标是一个平台原型，能够支持使用GDL实现的四款游戏的10个同时用户。用户的试点测试将评估关键的可用性指标，以促进在第二阶段进行进一步的、更大规模的测试和GDL改进。

This SBIR phase I project will create a web-based platform for developing and distributing interactive, mobile-enabled games for Information and Operations Management. Each of these games will illustrate one to two fundamental academic concepts by having students engage in short, round-based interactions that last less than one classroom session. Recent studies (Burke, 2012; Sitzmann, 2011), show that educational games, which focus on key concepts and provide immediate feedback to players, help students understand, learn and internalize fundamental academic concepts. The project addresses widespread obstacles reported by professors to incorporate games into their teaching, including the scarcity of games that were both relevant and technically capable in classroom environments. The broader impact of the proposed project is an increase in the adoption of pedagogically and academically validated educational games that facilitate retention and effective use of business concepts relevant to managing organizations. Hence, this proposal has potential to empower the workforce to be more productive and innovative, thus driving U.S. economic growth. Moreover, the eventual opening of the platform to a variety of third-party authors will accelerate game innovation and usage in other business and engineering disciplines at a lower cost, which will enhance the effectiveness of a broader STEM workforce. This project will employ automatically validated language to eliminate runtime errors in multiplayer Operations Management games, which will have been designed using a scientific Game Research & Development (GR&D) process for hosting on a web-distribution platform. Debugging runtime errors presents a particular challenge for non-professional programmers, such as professors. With runtime errors mitigated, the correctness of a program can be validated at compile time. Therefore, all games created with the project Game Description Language (GDL) will have a guaranteed level of technical quality and stability, allowing professors to focus on pedagogical relevance rather than technical stability of games. To mitigate the problem of runtime errors, this project employs methods of mainstream video game development, which relies heavily on non-professional programmers for storyline scripting. The main technical hurdle is that these methods must be tailored to result in automatically validated language capable of expressing the range of Operations Management games conceived during the GR&D process. The goal of the proposed R&D is a platform prototype able to support 10 simultaneous users of four games implemented using the GDL. Pilot tests with users will assess critical usability metrics to facilitate further, larger-scale testing and GDL improvements in Phase II.