INTEGRATING ICT WITH EDUCATION: DESIGNING AN EDUCATIONAL COMPUTER GAME FOR TEACHING FUNCTIONS IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS

Abstract

This research seeks to look into the design process that promotes the development of an educational computer game that supports teaching and learning processes. The research specifically looks at the design of an educational computer game for teaching and learning of the topic of functions. The topic is essential in the teaching and learning of Mathematics courses such as Discrete Mathematics, Real Analysis and Calculus among others at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) Kenya. The computer game was developed using the Basic Unified process (BUP) which is a streamlined version of the rational unified process (RUP).  This is an object oriented methodology mostly used for small projects with few end users. Due to the few numbers of end users we used interview method of data collection to gather requirements for the computer game. A paper prototype was used to validate the requirements.  Use cases were used for both analysis and design of the game while Class diagrams and activity diagrams were purely used for the design of the game. Owens’ six top level design anatomy aided in the design of the computer game.  The overall computer game design was based on Crawfords’ computer game design sequence model. The well designed and developed game met all its user requirements and was able to facilitate the teaching and learning of  functions to Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science students who were taking Discrete mathematics in their first year of study at JKUATs’ Taita/Taveta campus. Development of heuristics for measuring interest, fun and motivation are recommendations given to aid in the evaluation of user satisfaction of educational computer games.