Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Hana Hailu - Benedict College
Co-Author(s): Hong Jiang, Benedict College, Columbia, SC
Self-efficacy, as an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to succeed in specific situations, plays an important role in how one approaches goals, tasks, and challenges. However, in our world these days we lack educational games designed to enhance students’ academic performance and measure self-efficacy. This research uses a free and open source application, Blender, as a tool to design a 3D educational system with a function to embed educational questions and self-efficacy evaluation questions. Instead of using Game for entertainment purpose, this project focuses more on using a game to promote students’ interest in learning. In order to do that, this game system includes 5 components to build a complete educational game system: (1) import or design player; (2) import or design game objects for scene; (3) read educational questions from a .csv file, and embed them into game environment; (4) embed self-efficacy evaluation questions into game environment; (5) design score / report system. This project tested and completed the components (1), (2), and the function to show questions in the text with a sample to teach and evaluate how well the player can identify their fruits and vegetables. This function lays a foundation to achieve components (3) and (4). Other than that, a scoring system related to component (5) is designed and tested to help determine the knowledge the player has about fruits and vegetables. The major key holders in the game are near sensors, different scenes, and the game environment. This project provides a great tool to promote students’ learning and evaluate students’ self-efficacy.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): Benedict College, SURI 2016 Program; NSF Grant # HRD-1436222; Mentor Hong Jiang; School of STEM, Dean Dr. Raychoudhury.
Faculty Advisor: Hong Jiang, Hong.Jiang@benedict.edu
Role: While I was doing my research my mentor provided me with resources that helped me design the educational game. The main idea of the project consisted of 5 components (1) to import or design player; (2) to import or design game objects for scene; (3) to read educational questions from a .csv file, and embed them into game environment; (4) to embed self-efficacy evaluation questions into game environment; (5) to design score / report system. With what I had and with the resource that I got from my mentor, I designed an educational game with sample questions embedded inside it with component (1), (2) and (5) the 5 components over 6 weeks period of time.