THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIDEO GAMES IN A CDIO INTEGRATED CURRICULUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF QUINDÍO

Abstract

A significant number of children and young people dedicate high percentages of their free time to video games on different types of devices such as computers, consoles and cell phones. These video games, in addition to representing an element of fun and distraction, also impose challenges of different difficulty on players, which motivate players to improve their levels of attention and concentration [1]. Additionally, it is common that among the gamer community there is a desire to develop video games, but most of them do not have programming knowledge or skills. This scenario can be exploited to use video games as a tool in teaching programming at different levels of training, and also for the generation of products beyond entertainment [2].

On the other hand, the “Digital Learning: Content for All” initiative promoted by the Ministry of National Education includes video games and the generation of programming skills within its goals for education [3]. In that sense, different actors in the educational sector have created content from this initiative for the teaching-learning of social sciences, English, music, programming, among others. Thus, gamification and video games become useful support tools for virtuality within active teaching/learning methodologies based on inverted classrooms. Furthermore, the emergency generated by COVID-19 tested the talent and initiative of educators at all levels of training, who created different education strategies for virtuality, strategies that will surely remain in the post-pandemic. For this, some teachers in Colombia have found in video games a tool that fits this new work paradigm [4].

Considering the panorama presented above, this work presents the experience of the Electronic Engineering Program in terms of the educational use of video games, in particular, the authors have developed four undergraduate seminars and a diploma course, which directly impacted a population of 72 students who They were able to obtain their degree in Electronic Engineering between 2020 and 2023. From the seminars and the diploma, various video games were created, each focused on a specific topic, for all of them the Unity 3D software platform and different hardware platforms such as computer and smartphone were used.

In the case of the seminars, the University Magic-Pro video games stand out as support for the presentation of Saber Pro Tests and the video games for the Teaching of Mathematics in Primary Basic Education, for the latter case a cooperation agreement was established between the College Las Capuchinas of the city of Armenia and the University of Quindío. Regarding the diploma, there were two cohorts of 34 students who developed video games on different topics such as health, tourism, education and agriculture. In particular, the following products stand out: video game for the promotion of the Engineering programs of the University of Quindío and video game for the purpose of promoting the tourist attractions of Quindío in agreement with the Chamber of Commerce of Armenia, video game for the conservation of river otters in the Quindío river basin and the La Vieja river, citizen culture, among others.

Based on the above, the integrated curriculum of the Electronic Engineering program at the University of Quindío offers a unique training opportunity for students to interact with the environment through the development of video games through degree and diploma seminars, which have been structured with the following requirements:

• Educate and entertain by encouraging the development of programming skills
• Integrate into the curriculum with methodological approaches such as gamification and game-based learning, considering active teaching/learning methodologies based on a flipped classroom with applications in the environment using the UNITY platform.
• Strengthening and development of soft skills such as memory management, teamwork, written communication, among others.
• Strengthening and development of hard skills supported by creative processes such as the proper management of programming languages ​​to shape dynamic and mechanical elements of a video game, design of environments with programming languages, which in this case would be level design of the game. game, and representation of sketches in 2D or 3D creating animations represented in characters, settings and objects.

In conclusion, the integrated curriculum and the developed video games created connections between real products where the students of the Electronic Engineering program and the territory were integrated, with satisfaction of needs accompanied by creativity and engineering knowledge.