Serious Game for Physics as an Active and Gamified Learning Strategy

TL;DR

This paper presents a serious game designed to enhance physics learning by promoting active, gamified education focused on free fall and kinematics, using a game engine to simulate rigid body dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel educational game that combines active learning strategies with simulation of physics concepts using a game engine.

Findings

Students successfully implemented the game during a semester.

The game improved understanding of kinematics and dynamics.

Active and gamified learning increased student motivation.

Abstract

The design of a serious game is presented that served as an instrument to motivate and aid to Physics education using active and ludic learning, specifically the topic of free fall of objects, with diverse educational purposes, first to apply a set of teaching strategies focused on promoting supervised active learning and live programming and second, providing a serious game to illustrate the notions of kinematics and simulate the dynamics of rigid bodies using a video game engine. Thanks to the use of the game engine and a holistic methodology, it was possible to help Physics students implement said serious game during a semester of an introductory Physics course.