AtomQuest: Developing Serious Games for Chemistry Teaching

Closed Human-Computer Interaction Bachelor Master Project Thesis No Affiliation

Motivation:

Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds composed of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances.

In order to convey this knowledge to students and learners, different chemistry teaching and learning methodologies have been developed throughout the years (e.g understanding how students learn chemistry and determining the most efficient methods to teach chemistry). Moreover, there are multiple instructional design frameworks such as Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy that help teachers and instructors alike to define the learning objectives and design the instructions.

Using the power and versatility of games, we want to associate each game element to its corresponding learning element. This mapping would give us the ability to design and develop a serious game for chemistry teaching where the game elements encode the necessary knowledge we want to convey. To test the effectiveness of this approach, we need to define the scope of our serious game, design and develop several prototypes, organize playtest sessions and finally test the knowledge retention on players.

The story could be: AtomQuest is the journey of an atom in the search of its destiny. In this journey, the atom meets Friends and Enemies, makes Alliances and participates in Battles. The atom faces multiple challenges and can lose its crown (electrons) to transform to an ion ! The atom has brothers and sisters called isotopes, each one of them serves a purpose.

So, this thesis project aims at creating fun experiences but makes sure all the learning objectives are met. It will be based on our current serious game research in the Games Engineering Group.

Tasks:

Literature research

• Exhaustive listing of chemistry teaching serious games
• Serious game frameworks and approaches used to design these games
• Documentation and classification of these games in our serious game database

Conceptualization

• Definition of the scope of the knowledge base
• Association of each chemical element to its corresponding Game Element (according to the Unifying Game Ontology framework)
• Use our serious game design tool and give feedback about its usability

Implementation

• Design and Development of, at least, one game based on the Chemical Elements/Game Elements mapping
• Revisions and enhancement by adding visual effects and animations

Testing

• Organize play test sessions
• Data collection and analysis
• Test the knowledge retention on players by preparing quizzes

Prerequisites:

• Research methods
• Principles of real-time interactive systems
• Game engines (Unity or Unreal Engine)
• Programming (C# or C++)

References:

• [1] Serious Games To Transform The Way Molecular Chemistry Is Taught In Schools
• [2] Gamification of ChemDraw during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Investigating How a Serious, Educational-Game Tournament (Molecule Madness) Impacts Student Wellness and Organic Chemistry Skills while Distance Learning
• [3] The use of serious games in science education: a review of selected empirical research from 2002 to 2013
• [4] GENIUSUP! CHEMISTRY (SPECIAL EDITION)! AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE THROUGH SERIOUS GAMES FOR CHEMISTRY LEARNING IN A LUDIC WAY
• [5] 7 Awesome Video Games For Teaching Chemistry
• [6] Development of a Serious Game to Improve the Teaching of Chemistry

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