Playing and learning? Educational gaming for engineering education

Educational gaming has spurred a surge of interest in the educational arena. There exists now a renewed interest in the science of gaming and its application to education. The idea of having curricular materials that are just as ´fun´ and hard to put down as games are needed as well as intriguing. The design and development of this type of tool to contain important and solid educational content is in even greater need by educational professionals. It is common to see students spending endless hours playing games while the same is not imaginable studying for a test. Games are engaging and fun and it is worthwhile researching their use in education. They provide the ability to process information quickly, utilize parallel processing and visual processing techniques, improve data organization, critical thinking and problem solving skills. These are just a few skills gained through playing games. The purpose of this paper is to present gaming as an educational tool and its use in engineering education. The paper will present and review tools that can be used in the development of educational games as well as present the materials education game (MEG) environment, this is an environment that was developed for use in a materials science educational game. This environment uses the principles of gaming for teaching a core concept in materials engineering.