Friday, October 28, 2011
Room A2/A7 (San Jose Convention Center)
The learning demands of our students are changing at a fast pace and require highly interactive and authentic environments. Students learn very rapidly doing multitasking events simultaneously like texting using iPhones®, playing video games, and web-surfing. Although educators are aware of this fact, not much has been done to change the students’ learning environments. However, there are not many video games that address the concept of the emerging field of nanotechnology as part of the main storyline. Therefore, a game that addresses this emerging field is highly needed. We are currently in the brainstorming and prototyping stage of the transformation of the NanoVenture board game into a web-based game and/or iPad version using Unity 3D® as the main game development tool. The aim of the iNanoVenture is to increase the impact and students use of the game in a different learning environment as well as to ease the distribution of the game with national and international audiences. In addition, the availability and portability of the iPad® would make this game accessible for our outreach events as well as easy implementation and assessment of their use in classroom settings. Play-testing sessions of paper-based prototype of the iNanoVenture game and pilot testing of assessment instruments to measure pedagogical effectiveness will be conducted during late summer 2011 with undergraduate students at UW-Madison. Preliminary results of game design process and play-testing sessions will be presented in this poster.