Developing design creativity: the potential for using engineering computer games

本研究旨在了解最新一代基于物理的工程计算机游戏用于远程工程设计教育的机会。该项目将利用这些游戏开发教育干预措施，以支持学生学习创意设计过程，包括问题定义，概念生成，概念选择，概念开发和原型制作。将评估这些干预措施的有效性，以便为教育吸收这些游戏提出建议，作为类似体育活动的替代品（必要时）或作为补充。该项目将分六个阶段进行：（1）审查与工程教育、设计教育、远程学习、分布式团队和游戏化相关的先前工作;（2）审查最新一代的工程游戏，如Poly Bridge（干仙人掌）和奇妙的装置（Northway Games），专注于他们的教育潜力;（3）为游戏设计及发展不同的任务或关卡，让学生有机会探索创意设计活动及应用工程科学;（4）利用这些任务或水平，考虑阶段性活动、团队角色、离线计算和预测，制定教育干预措施;（5）在CUED和其他教育机构中，使用对照实验来调查这种干预措施对学生群体的有效性（如有可能，扩大到专业群体），（6）将这些干预措施与实际设计-建造-测试活动进行比较，以确定学习方面的差距和重叠。

This study aims to understand the opportunities for the latest generation of physics-based engineering computer games to be used for remote engineering design education. The project will leverage these games to develop educational interventions to support student learning about the creative design process, including problem definition, concept generation, concept selection, concept development and prototyping. The effectiveness of those interventions will be assessed to permit recommendations to be made for educational uptake of such games, either as a replacement for similar physical activities (when required) or as an addition to them. The project will proceed in six stages: (1) review relevant prior work related to engineering education, design education, remote learning, distributed teams and gamification; (2) review the latest generation of engineering games, such as Poly Bridge (Dry Cactus) and Fantastic Contraption (Northway Games), focussing on their educational potential; (3) identify and develop tasks or levels for such games, focussing on opportunities for students to explore creative design activities and apply engineering science; (4) develop educational interventions using such tasks or levels, considering staged activities, team roles, offline calculations and predictions; (5) use controlled experiments to investigate the effectiveness of such interventions with student groups, both at CUED and other educational institutions (expand to professional groups if possible), (6) compare such interventions with physical design-build-test activities to identify gaps and overlaps in learning.