Designing Computer Games to Help Physics Students Understand Newton's Laws of Motion

Abstract This research, explores, the design of a computer environment for helping science students to learn about Newtonian dynamics. The learning environment incorporates games set in the context of a Newtonian computer microworld, where students have to control the motion of a spaceship in order to achieve goals such as hitting a target or navigating a maze. The purpose of the games is to focus the students' attention on various aspects of the implications of Newton's laws. A set of general design principles guided the design of the games and microworld. These include: (I) represent the phenomena of the domain clearly; (2) eliminate irrelevant complexities from the computer microworld; (3) focus the students on as peers of their knowledge.that need revising; (4) facilitate the use of problem-solving heuristics; (5) encourage the application of relevant knowledge from other domains; and (6) encourage better ways of representing and thinking about the domain. A controlled study indicated that playing the games improved the students' ability to solve dynamics problems. The students utilized various components of their knowledge, including their intuitions concerning how forces affect motion and their partial understanding of the formal physics, to generate strategies for the games. The use of such knowledge is combined with the use of general problem-solving heuristics and feedback from the computer microworld to facilitate the evolution of the students' knowledge of Newtonian dynamics. An examination of the results in light of the original design principles suggested numerous improvements that could be made to the sequence of games and microworld. The design process could best be characterized as a series of successive refinements.