Serious games for building skills in computing and engineering

Abstract

Various forms of online games are used in education. Most games are generic in nature, such as quiz games or adventure games, into which nearly any topic (like math, history, spelling, computer programming) can be integrated. We focus instead on games that each builds a specific skill through repetition. Repetition is known to improve learning by moving concepts from short-term to long-term memory, but excessive uninteresting repetition can lead to stress and fatigue, and eventually to students giving up. In contrast, many games involve repetition but in an interesting/enjoyable form, with the player striving to improve. Our approach custom designs each game for a specific skill deemed important to a topic, such as writing if-else statements in computer programming. The custom design is needed to make the skill be an essential part of the gameplay. This paper presents several games our team has developed so far, for topics in computing and math, and describes plans to build more. The games are free and currently at http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~vahid/seriousGames/. The games are web-based (HTML5) and require no software installation, being playable on any standard web browser.