Cubicle: An adaptive educational gaming platform for training spatial visualization skills

Ziang Xiao, Helen Wauck, Zeya Peng, Hanfei Ren, Lei Zhang, Shiliang Zuo, Yuqi Yao, Wai Tat Fu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that spatial visualization skills are crucial for success in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. With an increasing number of students entering STEM disciplines, the question of how to effectively train students' spatial visualization skills has become very important. While a scalable existing solution is to implement online workshops for students, the problem of how to motivate students to participate in these online workshops remains unsolved. In this study, we studied gamification as a way to motivate first year engineering students to take part in an online workshop designed to train their spatial visualization skills. Our game contains eight modules, each designed to train a different component of spatial visualization. The game records players' in-game behavior with high granularity, which allows us to provide automated, scalable feedback on players' problem-solving strategies. Ten students with different levels of spatial ability played our game and expressed a strong interest in using the game to train their spatial visualization skills in the future. In addition, our analysis of players' ingame behaviors shows the potential benefits of implementing adaptive and personalized learning guidance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationIUI 2018 - Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages91-101
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781450349451
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 5 2018
Event23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, IUI 2018 - Tokyo, Japan
Duration: Mar 7 2018Mar 11 2018

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Proceedings IUI

Other

Other23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, IUI 2018
Country/TerritoryJapan
CityTokyo
Period3/7/183/11/18

Keywords

  • Education
  • Game features
  • Learning analytics
  • Player behavior
  • STEM
  • Spatial visualization skills
  • Video games

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction

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