Gamify to Solve

serious games; gamification; problem-solving; creativity; theory-practice gap; internationalization; neuroscience; cognitive training; 3D technology; veterinary; physiology; medicine

"Anyone can cook” a quote that inspired “Remi” the rat in Pixar movie “Ratatouille” to become the greatest chef in Paris. But, can we say “anyone can solve”?. “Ratatouille” is not just a movie, but it is an everyday dream for those who seek professional training to solve their countries industrial and health problems.  And, while universities scholarships offer unprecedented opportunities for those dreamers to get integrated into their professional education systems, only few can find their way into creativity and professionalism tracks.  Practicing the same thing every day can make out of anyone a professional, whereas creativity is triggered from being regularly challenged by novel problems. Thus, it is empirical for professional education systems to endorse the cornerstones for both professionalism and creativity. However, although educational technologies have offered educators a variety of interfaces for conveying the exponentially growing advances in theoretical and practical information, few of them manage to efficiently simulate real-life problems or boost creative thinking. Most of the educational systems are basically focusing on implementing Learning management system (LMS) and video-based learning (e.g. MOOC) for knowledge storage and presentation (visualization). On the other hand, while leisure games opened the way for immersive environments to find their ways into serving more serious purposes, professional training systems are still reluctant to integrate them into their educational domains. Yes, games are for leisure but why education cannot be an affordable leisure.  Towards proving this point, I’ve introduced a virtual 3D environment titled “Equine Virtual Farm”(EVF) for practicing physiological concepts while diagnosing diseases. Comparing students’ educational outcomes in both EVF and LMS (Blackboard) showed students’ greater tendency to solve problems within EVF compared to Blackboard. Furthermore, investigating the neural correlates of playing veterinarian within EVF has revealed how brain networks can be shaped while solving problems within novel and known environments, hence the understanding of what define creativity. Thus, there is a need for developing continuously challenging and novel training environments if creativity and professionalism are to be realized.  Such continuous development is challenging due to inexperienced educators in programming and 3D technologies. Accordingly, "Gamify to Solve" is proposed as an open access dedicated platform for training university students and educators on 3D technologies to develop and share their problem-based serious games. A pilot training course titled “Practicing Research within Serious games” is currently offered at Freie Universität Berlin for veterinary students to build 3D games for cases/problems of their choice. On one hand, the students will learn and practice gamification technologies (i.e. 3D technology, game engines and programming) while building their games for their target problems. And on the other hand, they will share their immersive learning environments with other students and educators to learn, practice and teach* problem-solving. The resulting games with their 3D objects and scripts will be published on the seminar's platform for anyone to practice and integrate into solving their (games) problems (examples). The platform employs machine learning algorithm for linking and retrieving related game objects.

*FU VetMed Physiology Deptartment uses EVF in teaching

The concept of implementing serious games into training systems is not new. Serious games have already begun to find their way into cognitive training and disease rehabilitation programs. Many neuroscience studies have revealed their potential effects in protecting against dementia and Alzheimer. Education on the other hand has shown to create a cognitive reserve in the brain that increases the tolerance of mental damage. So, why students cannot share their problem-solving experiences within games to boost students' and educators' problem-solving and creative skills while building-up cognitive reserve?

While 3D simulations have proved their training effectiveness in safe environments, developing them is still challenging due to educators' inexperience in 3D technology and programming and their reluctance to learn. Thus, offering an open access platform that offers training courses on using 3D technology (i.e. 3D modelling, virtual reality, animations and programming) in building immersive educational games under educators’ supervision will produce a variety of problem-solving serious games that can be shared with students and educators in other countries. Furthermore, it will relieve the working load on educators and show them the potentialities of serious games for deep learning.

With the beginning of the next semester, the seminar will be offered to international students and educators. We will start with Cairo University, where students and educators will be trained in collaboration with those at Freie Universität Berlin (FU) in building games for their target problems. Publishing both countries’ games will aim for triggering creativity in game designing, sharing learning experiences, problems and solutions across countries, hence problem solving. Moreover, I'm currently planning on offering an additional workshop next year for training FU lecturers on using Virtual Reality in Research.

Our future plan is to extend the seminar to other domains, such as human medicine, engineering, biology, chemistry and humanities. The aim of such extension is to share interdisciplinary problem-based immersive environments, where 3D objects can be linked and reused for solving known and novel problems. For example, x-ray machine can be integrated in diagnosing both human and animal diseases. Thus, different domains educators can benefit from each other experience via getting trained on their interlinked problems and solutions. And, machine learning algorithms will be deployed to link and retrieve related game objects

As mentioned above, students and educators games will be shared on a public blog, where students and educators all over the world can access, download and reuse. 

Few participants are currently serving my solution. Few veterinary students are currently working this semester on developing their games (4-8 students). Twenty students participated in the neuroscience study within 3 months. And more than 200 students have been using Equine Virtual Farm since 2012.

After contacting Cairo University, around 50 students and educators will be serving my solutions in the next semester. And in 3 years, around 300 veterianry students and educators are expected to serve. However, if we managed to include other domains, participants count can reach more than 1000. 

Being an institute at Freie Universität berlin facilitates the recruitment of students and educators from different domains to serve the cause. In addition, our institute the Center for Digital Systems offers many e-learning and e-research services, including training programs for students and educators. Moreover and in addition to my skills in programming, semantic computation, 3D modelling and animations, our institute has a variety of programmers that can assist in building-up the required servers and platforms.   

The games that will be developed won't be for profit. Our main objective is to reach a wide range of people, including those in developing countries. And, the integration of the training courses and the platform within the curricula will ensure its long-term sustainability and expansion.

Evaluating ideas by solve community is an excellent opportunity for boosting ideas from pilot to production. In addition, building partnerships with other Solver teams will be a great opportunity in advancing my solution by realizing common objectives. Furthermore, MIT granted funds will definetly assist in speeding up the production process.

Many serious games have been developed in the market, but very few of them have been designed and evaluated based on brain neural activities. Thus, in addition to developing serious games for education, I aim to investigate their neural correlates and the possibilty of applying players neural feedback to automatically modify games difficulty levels (i.e. adaptive learning). To achieve this, solve grants and partnerships can assist me in designing serious games that target creativity with professionalism.