It has long been recognized that games are useful in engineering education, and more recently they have also become a common setting for empirical research. Games are useful for both teaching and research because they mimic aspects of reality and require participants to reason within that realistic context, and they allow researchers to study phenomena empirically that are hard to observe in reality. This paper explores what can be learned by students and by researchers, based on the authors’ experience with two sets of games. These games vary in both the experience level of the participants and the “fidelity” or realism of the game itself. Our experience suggests that what can be learned by participants and by researchers depends on both these dimensions. For teaching purposes, inexperienced participants may struggle to connect lessons from medium-fidelity games to the real world. On the other hand, experienced participants may learn more from medium-fidelity games that provide the time and support to practice and reflect on new skills. For research purposes, high-fidelity games are best due to their higher ecological validity, even with inexperienced participants, although experienced participants may enable strong validity in medium-fidelity settings. These findings are based on experience with two games, but provide promising directions for future research.
Faculty With Industrial Experience Bring A Real World Perspective To Engineering Education
