Evaluation of a video game adaptation for mechanical engineering educational laboratories

Nowadays, an increasing number of video games enable third-party designers to redesign the original games. By adapting video games and taking advantage of their technical features such as 3D effects, audio, Internet communications, etc., educators can deliver certain course materials through these games. Meanwhile, whether, or to what extent, these educational adaptations enhance the students' learning effectiveness is still the subject of research. In a mechanical engineering educational laboratory, students may face theories or concepts that they have just learned, mechanical devices that they have not previously used as well as collaborative tasks that they have not been assigned before. While traditional educational laboratories may be constrained by hardware, an adaptation of video games may help the students. An immersive gear train laboratory has been developed in which a popular first-person shooting game, Garry's Mod, was adapted. In this paper, an evaluation of this adaptation is presented from both a laboratory performance perspective and a learning effectiveness perspective. 110 undergraduate students who took the junior-level "Machine Dynamics and Mechanisms" course in the authors' university performed video game-based gear train laboratory exercises immediately after attending the lectures and completing the homework related to the chapter on gear design. They were required to form groups for completing the laboratory tasks in the video game environment, where their operations were recorded. Short tests were given to the students before and after the laboratory exercises in order to assess whether their understanding of the course material was enhanced by the laboratory exercises. It was found that the students' performance in the laboratory exercises is more likely to be affected by their understanding of the course material than by their familiarity with first-person shooting games. From these tests, it was observed that most students showed an improvement in understanding the course contents after completing the laboratory exercises.