Page 237 - The-5th-MCAIT2021-eProceeding

Digital Game Design for Physics Education

b*
a
Nor Aidatul Ismail , Azrulhizam Shapii
a,b Faculty of Information Science & Technology, UKM Bangi, 43600, Malaysia
* Email: azrulhizam@ukm.edu.my

Abstract

Malaysia's Ministry of Education confirmed that the number of students who enrolled in school's science stream option
declined in the year 2018 than years before that. Physics is listed as one of the must-enroll subjects under STEM education.
There is some research done previously stating that students had some negative perceptions towards Physics. Therefore,
teachers or educators have to develop strategies to trigger their students' interest and motivation toward this subject. Among
the strategy is the game-based learning approach. However, there are some challenges that the teachers have to encounter
even though they had some interest in the approaches, mainly due to the lack of basic programming skills. This research
was initiated to assist teachers in exploring the concept of game development without any programming background. This
research is also aimed to highlight some free and open-source game engines available in the market. Using the Game
Development Life Cycle approaches, this research explored three easy and free software to develop physics education
games. The research aims to help teachers utilize the free and easy software and build their games without any basic
programming skills.

Keywords: Game-based learning; digital game, teaching, and learning; STEM; Physics education

1. Introduction

Physics is one of the subjects listed under STEM education. Based on research conducted by the Faculty of
Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, students enrolled in the science stream had some negative impressions on
Physics. Ministry of Education (MOE) also confirmed that the number of students enrolled in the STEM stream
has been inclining by years; based on facts, 49 percent of students enrolled in 2012, but the number reduced to
44 percent in 2018. Therefore, various programs and events have been initiated to spark students' interest in
understanding STEM subjects. Mazlin and Iksan (2018); Salleh and Halim (2016), based on the research on
students' motivation against Physics subjects, stated that students encountered problems understanding the
concept and elements because they assumed it is too abstract and concrete. Students who consider Physics as a
student are irrelevant to be learned (Saleh 2014). This kind of perception gave learned on the student's
achievements, which leads to situations where they did not understand what has been taught and continuously
depended on teachers without any effort to master the knowledge by themselves (Jufrida et al. 2019). We have
seen teachers had to venture into technology for TnL due to the closure of schools nowadays. Lay and Osman
(2018) brought a new approach to the TnL of Chemistry by introducing a digital game, KimDG, to help students
understand the topic of salt. In the same study, the researchers found that the game allows students to work
together to understand and create more effective, understandable ideas and concepts. Anderson and Barnett's
(2013) study on America's high school students showed a positive result on the Physics digital game approach,
Supercharged! Rather than conventional TnL. The game-based learning approach is more likely to impact
students' understanding and mastery of an impact positively. The game-based learning approach is more relevant,
either digitally or not, compared to conventional learning (Hafis & Supianto 2018). However, the digital game-
based learning approach could be challenging, especially when Malaysia's teachers mostly came from a non-
technical background (Mat Diah & Yahya 2009).
The developers usually came from a technical background with basic coding and programming knowledge
to develop a digital game. However, multiple game engines are available in the market for people to utilize,
however, with some programming language mastery requirements (Chamillard 2007) such as C++, C#, or Java

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Artificial Intelligence in the 4th Industrial Revolution