CuriouSer
CuriouSer was a VR educational game for the Google Pixel, where the player works in a fast food pizza restaurant in space. This project’s aim was to create an educational game which teaches introductory computer science concepts for beginners of computer science. The CuriouSer team worked through extensive research and play-testing; pushing the boundaries of Virtual Reality educational experiences. In the game, the player must cook different flavored pizzas in a specified time for Aliens.
Role: Game Designer
Organized and participated in brainstorming design sessions.
Conceptualized situation and scenario to be inclusive and engaging towards the target audience (middle and high school students).
Paper prototyped concept with cardboard boxes to create a 3D space in order to mimic VR space.
Organized play-tests and feedback sessions from play-testers of all ages, primarily between middle and high school students.
Assisted in the creation of a sample lesson plan to help teachers include this new game into their pre-existing curriculum.
Worked closely in collaboration within a small multidisciplinary team.
Attended and participated in meetings among administration education professionals and teachers to confirm the information we are teaching is accurate and concise.
CuriouSer was an academic project created over the course of a semester. My team and I were partnered with our Client Alice who is a subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University. Specializing in Computer Science education, a representative came to us and requested we make a game facilitating CS education within schools though what we decided to teach in our game was entirely up to us. So we started researching...
Problem
Learning CS in middle and high school is not engaging or fun.
Goal
To create a fun and engaging CS game which educates students on the uses of methods and functions.
Solution
Create a virtual reality CS alien-space cooking game where the primary objective is making pizzas through creating "function" presets.
Over the first two weeks of the project we examined many different references that already have been proven to teach CS well. However, we were specifically tasked of making a game that teaches CS but also is "Fun". Though our references were excellent at educating, we felt they lacked the level of entertainment that we were seeking to explore and implement into our game.
The next thing for us to do was to discuss with teachers the methods they already used to teach CS, how they kept their student engaged, and how they assessed student learning.
With one other team member, we started visiting schools and conversing with teachers about their needs alongside their students needs. We wanted to know what aspects of the teachers experience we could make easier while maintaining effectiveness. We discovered the most important aspects were...
Engagement
Knowledge Acquisition
Assessment
Because of our findings above we determined the next steps would be to decide exactly what we will be teaching in the game. With endless possibilities, where do we even start? We revisited the programs we'd been referencing to see exactly what they were teaching and when within their courses curricula. After revisiting teachers we consolidated our findings...
Debugging
Infrastructure
Functions/Methods
Variables
A little abstract for Middle School
Excellent to learn early, if possible
Extremely versatile but hard to master
Useful, but is there something more so?
After discussing with schools and teachers with our list of options. It was conclusive that teachers saw a lot of value in making a game about functions/methods. We agreed and were excited because we already some ideas for how to make the game educational and fun. But first, we needed a platform.
Platform Research
We started looking at platforms, but we knew there was one condition that needed to be met. It needed to be mobile and easily accessible in the classroom.
Options?
A lot of the schools we were visiting had access to a lot more technology than we originally thought. They had HTC Vive's, Oculus', Google Pixels/Day Dreams, Chrome Books, Ipads, and so much more. We had so many options. However, due to the respect of our client Alice, they insisted that we either choose Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality because Alice's mission was to bring educational CS instruction through VR, primarily.
Augmented vs Virtual
After attending several educational workshops, teaching seminars, meetings with teachers, and reading several papers and research books, it seemed clear which option was the better choice though I will write the pros and cons of each and explain our choice.
Augmented Reality
Pros
Students can see their environment and engage with it. Because a lot of classrooms have environmental information, this could be crucial.
Easier to incorporate more than one student.
Would not replace the teacher easily.
Cons
Believabilty for the student? Suspension of disbelief.
AR programs notoriously are buggy at this point in time.
Holding the AR systems is usually bulky and heavy after a short period.
Virtual Reality
Pros
Better immersion, suspension of disbelief.
Easier to theme an entirely 3D world.
Usually light weight and accessible and inclusive for most students.
Cons
Hard to incorporate multiple student interactions.
Most students aren't familiar with VR controller schemes.
Unadvised to stay in the headset for a long period of time.
Due to the research above, it seemed better for educational purposes to choose AR because of the ease of incorporating multiple students and the visibility of the classroom environment but due to unexpected constraints from some of the schools and our clients burning desire for us to develop in VR, we decided to go with Mobile VR using the Google Daydream and Google Pixel.
