Using a Novel Gravity Model for Ranking and Assessment of Educational Games

Teaching introductory transportation engineering subjects can be very challenging. These courses usually include diverse topics and can involve students from different background and interest levels. Keeping students engaged and focused requires changes in traditional delivery methods. It also requires the design of exercises that are especially targeted to address certain concepts. Game-aided pedagogy has been proposed to stimulate students’ interest and increase the efficiency of their learning. Our research team developed multiple games that were designed to target different concepts in the transportation fields. These games deliver appropriate amount of information density and accessibility, and utilize multimedia and hypermedia contents. We have developed a novel gravity model to relate students learning to information density, ability of students to absorb knowledge, and difficulty of delivery, and have previously demonstrated the model with one of the games. In this paper, we expand and illustrate the use of the educational gravity model to assess and compare different games used in game-aided teaching. A description of two different games is included in this paper. Each game uses refined 3D vivid scenes to attract and stimulate students. Gameplay data collected include students’ responses in each game level. Both games use clientserver architecture to interact with students and store their gameplay data to assess the students’ learning outcomes. We capture the effectiveness of each game by calibrating the gravity factor in each model. Each game has a naturally different gravity factor that could be associated with the game’s appeal and capability to transfer knowledge. We attempt to shed more light into this concept and the potential for its use in ranking and evaluating newly developed games in terms of their pedagogical value.