Force Field: Big Idea

3D gaming technologies for visualization.
Mastering the core principals of Electricity and Magnetism is notoriously difficult. Science educatiors have been examining this troublesome area for decades. As Dede et al. write "Electromagnetic fields are three-dimensional, abstract, and have few analogies to learners’ everyday experiences. As a result, students have trouble understanding the relationship of abstractions about electric fields to phenomenological dynamics." Learners often confuse the concepts of force and energy or fail to understand how electric charges interact with test charges. Students lack real-life referents of electromagnetic interactions, intuitive metaphors for understanding the interactions, or environments for testing their thoughts and assumptions about how charges interact. As a result, tudents frequently develop and retain impoverished understandings and misconceptions of Electromagnetic phenomena.

Intuitive understandings of an immersive world.
A game on Electromagnetism could give learners opportunities to interact with Electromagnetic phenomena. Learners’ experiences manipulating charges and interacting within Electromagnetic worlds could be the basis for developing qualitative understandings of these phenomena. Research (Dede et al., 1999; Reimann & Spada, 1996; White, 1993; White & Frederickson, 1992) suggests that such qualitative experiences are the foundation for more scientific, abstract understanding.

Fantastic, surrealist environment
Over the last ten years, many American game designers have become increasingly interested in providing "realistic" graphics. We believe that there is an array of untapped aesthetic areas to explore in creating surrealistic, fantastic, or "other-worldly worlds". Most game designers have assumed that game spaces should roughly model reality in order to provide a intuitive feel to the gameplay. Why not create a game where surprise is built into every new interaction in the environment? As Steven Poole argues, as gaming graphics approach photorealism, the next generation of innovations in game design may come from creating fantastic, but internally consistent worlds rather than "realistic" environments.