November 7, 2019乐播传媒鈥檚 App.Farm Games Make Big Progress this Fall
Since 2015, students in the 乐播传媒鈥檚 App.Farm have been developing digital games, card games and apps that excite learners, and this fall, two projects are meeting major milestones.
The App.Farm is an innovative studio experience created to research how content learning occurs through the design and production process. It is led by 乐播传媒鈥檚 Cary Staples, professor, and Timothy Arment, lecturer, along with an interdisciplinary group of students from across UT. They all have one thing in common: The belief in the power of games to aid learning.
鈥淕ames provide a robust platform for learning because they are highly contextualized, goal-oriented environments,鈥 said Staples. 鈥淭hat is to say they afford players the drive to attain an objective within a constrained, pre-determined universe.鈥
Bonne Chance
Est-ce que tu parles francais?
Thanks to the App.Farm, students in UT鈥檚 French classes soon will have a mobile resource to complement the current French curriculum.
This fall, students from the college鈥檚 乐播传媒 as well as UT鈥檚 computer science and music programs are moving the App.Farm鈥檚 game, Bonne Chance, from proof of concept to screen prototype.
Bonne Chance is an app that takes the form of a French cultural immersion game to provide learners with an opportunity to encounter language in context.
Set in the future, Bonne Chance, which translates to 鈥済ood luck,鈥 leads the player through a mystery featuring a main character, Elodie, and a helpful robot. The duo must travel through time to various French locales solving clues to fix damage done to the time continuum by an evil villain.
Elodie, and therefore the player, experience various forms of the French language as they travel through the game, immersing the player in a fun and engaging learning experience.
Leveraging research generated by previous App.Farm teams, Graphic Design students Taylor Bogle and John Saunders have brought the game鈥檚 characters to life in animated forms, while Jacob Duffy, a computer science student, is completing code for the first 鈥渂oss battle.鈥
The game prototype will be available for download to Android hand-held devices this December. The game will be delivered in 鈥渃hapters,鈥 so students can complete one level at a time.
鈥淭his project is built on a growing body of work that demonstrates effective approaches to teaching strategic thinking and reasoning,鈥 said Arment. 鈥淯sing cross-functional teams, students and faculty collaborate to facilitate the design and development of a specific project from a granular level.鈥
VR Experience
Learning life skills is a challenge for people who are on the autism spectrum or who have intellectual disabilities, but virtual reality might be a solution.
Since 2017, students in the App.Farm have been exploring the possibilities inherent in a VR space. The current question is whether a task learned in VR can generalize to the real world.
鈥淟earning tasks through VR can help people with disabilities practice a life skill before they attempt the skill in real life,鈥 said Jared Robson, a Graphic Design student and member of the App.Farm team.
The team is developing a VR experience that teaches skills to autistic learners, the first of which involves prepping, making and cooking a pizza. With new team members, Interior Architecture student Kathryn Hopkins and Arment, who have experience in 3D rendering and modeling, this project is moving forward more quickly than expected.
The team is collaborating with David Cihak, UT professor of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, and a primary investigator for the , a two-year program for college students with intellectual disabilities and autism.聽 Cihak鈥檚 research studies effects of VR/AR (augmented reality) to improve academic skills in students with disabilities.
The VR student developers expect to have a proof of concept to begin writing grant proposals in November 2019.