Modern designs of flash games raise interest in chemical education

CHED 355

Caleb M. Hill, Department of Physical and Earth Sciences, Jacksonville State University, 700 Pelham Road, Jacksonville, AL 36265 and Martin G. Bakker, Bakker@bama.UA.edu, Department of Chemistry and Center for Materials for Information Technology, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0336.
Video games have firmly established a reputation as a useful teaching tool for teaching children. They have shown to be an effective tool for keeping a child's attention and reinforcing basic material. However, traditional computer games are often time-consuming and expensive to create. Also, commercially-made educational games usually cannot be modified to cover different material. The goal of this research, which lasted 10 weeks, was to explore the usefulness of Macromedia's Flash platform in creating chemistry-focused educational games. Through our research, we have been able to show that games created using Flash can be produced quickly and efficiently, even by a person with no prior programming experience. We also believe that these games can be easily modified to fit a broad range of educational needs.
 

Undergraduate Research Poster Session: Chemical Education
11:00 AM-1:00 PM, Monday, April 7, 2008 Morial Convention Center -- Hall A, Poster

Division of Chemical Education

The 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008