Creating Educational Immersive Environments Using a Computer Game Engine: Case Studies and Design Theory

This paper aims to crystallize recent research performed at the University of Worcester to investigate the feasibility of using the commercial game engine ‘Unreal Tournament 2004’ (UT2004) to produce ‘Educational Immersive Environments’ (EIEs) suitable for education and training. Our research has been supported by the UK Higher Education Academy. We discuss both practical and theoretical aspects of EIEs. The practical aspects include the production of EIEs to support high school physics education, the education of architects, and the learning of literacy by primary school children. This research is based on the development of our novel instructional medium, ‘UnrealPowerPoint’. Our fundamental guiding principles are that, first, pedagogy must inform technology, and second, that both teachers and pupils should be empowered to produce educational materials. Our work is informed by current educational theories such as constructivism, experiential learning and socio-cultural approaches as well as elements of instructional design and game principles.

The Path between Pedagogy and Technology: Establishing a Theoretical Basis for the Development of Educational Game Environments

The power of computer game technology is currently being harnessed to produce “serious games”. These “games” are targeted at the education and training marketplace, and employ various key game-engine components such as the graphics and physics engines to produce realistic “digital-world” simulations of the real “physical world”. Many approaches are driven by the technology and often lack a consideration of a firm pedagogical underpinning. The authors believe that an analysis and deployment of both the technological and pedagogical dimensions should occur together, with the pedagogical dimension providing the lead. This chapter explores the relationship between these two dimensions, and explores how “pedagogy may inform the use of technology”, how various learning theories may be mapped onto the use of the affordances of computer game engines. Autonomous and collaborative learning approaches are discussed. The design of a serious game is broken down into spatial and temporal elements. The spatial dimension is related to the theories of knowledge structures, especially “concept maps”. The temporal dimension is related to “experiential learning”, especially the approach of Kolb. The multi-player aspect of serious games is related to theories of “collaborative learning” which is broken down into a discussion of “discourse” versus “dialogue”. Several general guiding principles are explored, such as the use of “metaphor” (including metaphors of space, embodiment, systems thinking, the internet and emergence). The topological design of a serious game is also highlighted. The discussion of pedagogy is related to various serious games we have recently produced and researched, and is presented in the hope of informing the “serious game community”.

Development of a Collaborative Platform for Art Education: From Pedagogy to Technology

We report on the development of a Java-based application devised to support collaborative learning of Art concepts and ideas over the Internet. Starting from an examination of the pedagogy of both Art education and collaborative learning we propose principles which are useful for the design and construction of a “lightweight” software application which supports interactive Art learning in groups. This application makes “dynamics” of an art work explicit, and supports group interaction with simple messaging and “chat” facilities. This application may be used to facilitate learning and teaching of Art, but also as a research tool to investigate the learning of Art and also the development and dynamics of collaborating groups. Evaluation of a pilot study of the use of our system with a group of 20 school children is presented.