Educational game development: the Great Gateaway

Abstract

Choosing a university major is an important decision in a student’s educational journey, with many significant consequences. These decisions are important as being in the wrong major can have various adverse effects. However, the resources available are normally insufficient for students to make the most well-informed decision on a best-fit major. Many factors are at play, including the lack of understanding and mismatched expectations of the academic content, which might turn out to be misaligned with the students’ interests and capabilities. To provide students with an accessible way to familiarise themselves with a major’s content before making their decision, The Great Gateaway was designed and developed.

The Great Gateaway was developed using the Unity game engine and programmed in C#. It specifically targets pre-university students looking to better understand the academic content being taught should they choose the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering in Nanyang Technological University. The Great Gateaway focuses on Digital Electronics, a module that many undergraduates struggled to cope with. The game incorporates Game-Based Learning principles and pedagogical frameworks to ensure it delivers easily digestible content that facilitates an effective learning process, leveraging the engaging elements of video games to ensure learning remains enjoyable. The game consists of multiple tutorial levels and then test levels. The tutorial levels teach players new concepts in a low-stakes environment, while test levels allow students to apply what they have learnt, in an environment with higher stakes, hence enhancing the learning process. My contributions to this project include design ideation, programming, and quality assurance testing.

Given the current profile of technologically savvy pre-university students, The Great Gateaway as a game will not only be an appealing approach, but also a familiar concept to the target players. The Great Gateaway achieves its objectives of offering an easily digestible and engaging learning experience for pre-university students to better familiarise themselves with the academic content of a major, in hopes that they would be able to use it to make better informed decisions for themselves. This in turn would reduce the adverse effects that accompany a poor decision on an important juncture of their lives.