One of the
challenges of teaching ECON 102 (Intro to Microeconomics) is finding ways for
students to place conceptual knowledge of economics into a context that means
something to them (please find also Active Learning With Business Serious Games In Higher Education).
Two Penn
State economics professors, Dirk Mateer and Dave Brown, have worked with the Educational Gaming Commons (EGC) to create the "Serious Game" EconU, which is
being used for learning core economic concepts and may serve as the capstone project
for ECON 102 students.
EconU is a web based strategy game where players take on the role of a
fictional University administrator who must build, guide and sustain a fictional University to economic sustainability.
EconU is designed to provide players with an opportunity to critically think
and apply their knowledge of key microeconomic concepts such as elasticity, trade-offs
demand/supply, total revenue, costs, diminishing returns, scale, efficiencies
and externalities.
Within the
game, players chose everything about their fictional school, from the academic
disciplines they support to the price of tuition and everything in between (buildings,
student meal plans, student living, assistants hiring and healthcare, among others),
managing the campus while learning about economics.
Students
get an initial budget and they have to decide which types of dormitories and
other college facilities to build. Then there’s a series of unintended events
that disrupt the flow of the game and players have to think strategically about
which combinations work best with each other.
As stated by Dirk Mateer, they've created a real life experience where players
make policy decisions that matter in the context of economics.
Economic concepts are incorporated into the game throughout. The more students think in
economic terms the better they do in the game.
A trial
version was tested in Econ 104 Introductory Macroeconomic Analysis and Policy in
the summer 2012 and the final version was deployed for classroom use in the
fall. It is the most ambitious game development project the EGC has been a
part of so far.
EconU was designed as an open-ended experience by Zac Zidik and Chris Stubbs
of Penn State’s Educational Gaming Commons in conjunction with Dirk Mateer and
Dave Brown from Penn State’s Department of Economics. Zac Zidik, EGC
programmer/analyst, developed the Flag Engine that powers the game and can be
reused for other games.
“We thought
about the game’s mechanics and how they should lend themselves to those
learning objectives in a way that feels natural, but also compelling, says
Chris Stubbs, manager of the EGC.
Another
interesting aspect of the game was the incorporation of accessibility elements.
Elizabeth Pyatt, instructional designer with Teaching and Learning with
Technology, helped them focus on accessibility issues and make the game
accessible for all.
For more about EconU and educational gaming at Penn State in general, please visit the EGC web site.
For more about EconU and educational gaming at Penn State in general, please visit the EGC web site.