I am so proud and delighted with the progress of my research project aimed at innovating and transforming college classrooms through digital means—specifically, video games. This project addresses several aspects of classroom management, including (1) the role of the teacher in planning and managing learning and (2) the role and behaviors of students, as well as learning through video games.
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For the past two semesters, Nadim Boukhira, a physics professor at Dawson College and co-researcher on the project, has been working with student programmers Devrin Aiden Tiongson (Vanier College), Taief Ahmed (Concordia University), and Sara Katerji (University of Montreal) to create a video game on electricity and magnetism with a dozen levels rooted in educational game design principles, universal design for learning, and Bruner’s learning theory.
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As part of the project, Nadim Boukhira, with the support of his colleague Joel Trudeau (physics professor at Dawson College) and Ursula Sommerer, organized a competition called Level Design. This competition invited science students from Dawson College to engage in creating game levels for learning about the difficult and abstract concepts of electricity and magnetism. The competition took place on Friday, February 16, 2024.
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The competition was a great success with judges Chris Roderick (physics professor at Dawson College) and Sascha Kavanagh-Sommerer and Ryan Warner from Unity present.
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This project was funded by the ECQ (Canada-Quebec Agreement) and led by the University of Montreal (Principal Investigator: Neerusha Baurhoo Gokool and Co-Investigators: Normand Roy and Bruno Poellhuber) in collaboration with Jonathan Lessard from Concordia, Louis-Martin Guay from the University of Montreal, and several biology, chemistry, and physics teachers from Vanier College, John Abbott College, and Dawson College. A big thank you to Eya Benhassine, PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education, for her invaluable assistance in this project.