An evaluation of the use of a commercial game engine for the development of educational software

Abstract

The Frog Explorer software development proj ect represents significant progress in the potential utilization of 3-D game engines for educational purposes. Even with this progress, the Frog Explorer project remains an exciting area for further development. One such development effort is already underway at Missouri S&T wherein a new development team is experimenting with a different development plat form, the Alice visual programming language 7, with the additional goal of teaching the users how to program by encouraging them to add objects and educational activities to the base game program. Regardless of the particular development environment, it is clear that 3-D, immersive visualization and simulation environments are likely to be the future direction for educational software. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.