Gaming in Physics Class: approaching 2-D motion with Portal

ROSARIO MARGARITA ESCOBAR; LAURA BUTELER

Brasilis

Congreso; XV Conferência Interamericana de Ensino de Física (CIAEF) e do III Encontro Nacional do Mestrado Nacional Profissional em Ensino de Física (MNPEF); 2023

Consejo Interamericano sobre Enseñanza de la Física y Universidad Nacional de Brasilis

The sustained growth of the gaming industry for the last twenty years, which has had a sudden spike during the Covid - 19 lockdown, has encouraged the interest in video games as a learning resource. There exists a growing market of video games aimed for science learning. The well known Valve’s Portal has gained a broad acceptance among the gaming community since its first launch in 2007. One of its highlighted characteristics is related to its potential to enhance the learning experience on Newtonian physics content. However, the scientific evidence around some expected benefits of the use of Portal in learning environments is scarce. Until now, there exists a wide variety of categories and theoretical perspectives to evaluate video games as learning resources, which is an indicator of video games’ complexities as scientific study objects. This piece of work is aimed to describe a qualitative research approach to evaluate the power of Portal for learning Newtonian 2-D motion. Two central aspects to analyze are: (1) the characteristics of student’s intuitive knowledge on 2-D motion after a playing session with Portal; (2) the learning process within the context of a teaching learning sequence (TLS) including the game, through which students develop their understanding on a key concept: the velocity. The initial stage of the study entails a microgenetic analysis of Engineering students’ recordings and interviews transcripts, in order to describe the intuitive knowledge expressed during and after Portal sessions. Records’ analysis is informed by Knowledge in Pieces theory (diSessa, 1993). The second stage involves an interpretive records analysis to characterize the development of students’ concept of velocity through the Coordination Classs theory (diSessa, 2017). The qualitative approach aims for a fine-grained description of the interaction between a commercial Portal and students.