Video of Video Game in Mechanical Engineering Education
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| Audience/Grade: | College Sophomore-College Senior |
| Discipline(s): |
Mechanical Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Teaching - Lecture/Presentation |
| Media Type: |
WWW |
| Author(s): |
Brianno Coller |
| Description: | Video describing educational game at Northern Illinois University, where students learn principles of mechanical engineering by playing video games. The game is called NIU-Torcs and is built upon an open-source video game called Torcs. "On its surface, the game has the look, feel, and adrenaline-pumping action of a modern commercial video game. At it's heart, though, NIU-Torcs is a sophisticated simulation of automobiles and their components." NIU-Torcs is the underlying framework to teach an undergraduate numerical methods course (MEE 381). "Rather than learn numerical techniques for calculating derivatives, solving algebraic equations, root-finding, et cetera by reading a textbook and working on narrowly defined textbook problems, students learn by incorporating the techniques into a computer program that drives virtual cars in the video game. In addition to an authentic and engaging environment for learning numerical methods, the course gives students an opportunity to further develop their computer programming skills. Students in MEE 381, begin learning object oriented programming. They program in teams. They create relatively sophisticated software, consisting of more than a thousand lines of code. We do this in an authentic context that engages engineers." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | educational game |
| Is Component of: |
Advanced Computing in Engineering Education |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(a) Apply mathematics, science, and engineering (e) Identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems |
| Use of Resource: |
Students using this approach have many positive comments on youtube, where this video is also displayed. |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
High |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | March 2008 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.ceet.niu.edu/faculty/coller/video.htm |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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