Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

If you're thinking about adding games to your lesson plan, its a fairly safe bet that you'll see gains in areas like student satisfaction (which in and of itself can be extremely beneficial).  But while satisfaction is great, it can also be somewhat nebulous, which makes it a difficult metric by which to support an educational tool like video games.  If we hope to prove the value of games we must be able to show that they can improve learning - and that means improvements to test scores and grades.

One the goals of every engagement project the EGC runs is to find a way to produce evidence that shows how exactly games are impacting learning.  In the case of ChemBlaster, our Faculty Partner Mary Shoemaker has been collecting data for the past several years on how her students perform on early semester quizzes designed to test students on elements, ions, and polyatomic compounds (the same content which we have used as a foundation for the ChemBlaster game).  As you can likely guess, this sets the stage for a very obvious question - will ChemBlaster help to improve student quiz scores?  But there are also several other important questions we're curious about.  Will the use of a game aid in improved long term information retention?  Will it lead to longer periods of engagement with the subject matter than more traditional study aids?  Will it serve as a catalyst for additional Chemistry based discussion, competition, and mentorship among classmates and friends?  And with Chem101 recently having gone online, will ChemBlaster have a different impact on purely online students as compared to those taking resident classes.  These are just a few of the many questions we're hoping to answer in the coming months when ChemBlaster is deployed to Mary's students this coming spring and beyond.

Just how will ChemBlaster do?  For that answer, you'll need to stay tuned. 

Though its been a bit longer than I had intended since my last update, I wanted to take a few minutes to show off some new screen shots from ChemBlaster

These screenshots were taken from the game's second level, which deals with ion identification (as compared to level 1 which is about element identification).  Though the core gameplay is the same, in level two, the player fires positive and negative charges at randomly generated elements to build out 10 of a possible 30 cations or anions. 

As you can see if you compare the new screens to the old ones, quite a few new interface elements have been added since the last update.  A few highlights for your reading pleasure:

• Logisitcal additions have been made to the interface, including a score field, timer, current target, and progress meter (right hand side), as well as a level indicator (bottom left as well as background). 
• A "targetting sight" has been added to the blaster itself, allowing the player to fire with greater accuracy (visible in the second screen - a small white cirlce near the top of the board)
• Improved completion animations (screen 3) create an explosion of confetti after a successful "blast" as well as reinforcement of the element/ ion/ or compound blasted on the right hand side of the screen.
• An optional "Elemental Aid" has been added to help players who might be struggling or playing the game on their own without an acompanying chemistry class.  By default, the aid is toggled off (screen 1) but it can be activated at any time and will scroll each of a level's possible targets along the bottom of the screen (screens 2 and 3).  Activiating the aid will cause a score or time penalty. 
• A "next ball" button added to the end of the upcoming blast balls bar (a light blue circle in all screens).  Though not necessary for level 1, this allows players to increase the speed of a playthrough by cycling right to the charge or element they want to fire next.  An advanced feature that will help players improve their score and maximize class bragging rights.

Next up on the ChemBlaster agenda is the addition of compound levels as well as conducting student testing to make sure the game scratches chemistry students where they itch.  Stay tuned for more updates and maybe even a gameplay video in the near future.

Thanks to the great work of ETS Multimedia Developer Zac Zidik, we're happy to show off a first look at the ChemBlaster game as it comes to life.  Though the scoring mechanic and several other interface elements are still under development, these screens can give you an idea about where things are headed.  

What you see is based on the game's tutorial level, which will eventually help students to pair element names with their chemical symbols, while learning the basic mechanics of the ChemBlaster itself. 

Stay tuned for more updates!

One of our major goals in undertaking the current EGC engagement initiatives is to maintain a level of openness throughout the design and development process, in large part, to help showcase what goes into bringing a game from proposal to classroom implementation.

As such, I hope to be posting regular project updates here, to share the happenings, progress, and even major hurdles we have to overcome in our efforts to bring ChemBlaster to life. 

To kick things off, I'd like to point you to a few design sketch drafts of ChemBlaster which can be viewed under the media tab of our project page at http://gaming.psu.edu/Projects/chemblaster.  These sketches may not seem like much, but they represent the first visual conceptualization of the game itself and serve as a critical tool to help facilitate discussion between members of the project team.  Not only do these sketches help us to bridge the gap from conceptualization to prototype, but they'll also undoubtedly provide a view smiles when we look back at the end of the project and see how far we've come. 

I also wanted to share our project's wiki page, which serves as our HUB for design thoughts, questions, as well as general project information.  It, like everything you'll see in the projects area, is a work in progress, but thats part of what makes it exciting to show off.

Stay tuned for more screen shots, notes, and updates as the project moves forward!

I thought I'd share with you some of the things we're working on at the EGC.

First, we have two exciting Engagement Projects started. One is to build a game on ion identification, the other is to spot common grammar and writing errors. Stay tuned for more information on both in the coming weeks.

Next, we're starting to interview the many folks we've worked with over the past year or so. Every two-thee weeks, we'll be releasing a new podcast or vodcast, as well as a short related article that features a PSU faculty member that's using games and/or virtual worlds in their classes.

We're starting to script a short "Here's the EGC" video that will give newcomers a quick overview of who we are and what we do.

Jason Kaveney, our IST intern, is going gangbusters on a library of games that are or can be used for educational purposes. Building on the power of the masses, this library will be open for adding comments and ratings. It may be the first of it's kind in the country and I know it will be of incredible value to educators.

Finally, we're looking for ways to bring the various blogs with which the EGC staff share their words of wisdom together, so you can read posts from not just me, but from Bart Pursel and Chris Stubbs as well.

Stay tuned - the snowball is rolling down the hill, going faster and faster....