From 2006-2008, the Applied Games Research team devised and taught EDUC 122, a first-year university course entitled ‘Games and Education’, at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The course covered topics in educational psychology and game design, as well as teaching practical skills in the development of game modules for Neverwinter Nights. Student numbers ranged from about 35 to 50.

Course Structure

The course was twelve weeks long, split into two six week terms, with two lectures per week and one two-hour lab. During the first term, lectures focused on key topics in educational psychology, while the labs taught students how to use the Aurora toolkit, a relatively non-technical, user-friendly platform for developing Neverwinter Nights modules. In the second term, students were split into teams and allocated one of the educational topics from the first term to encapsulate in an educational game module. Lecture content in the second term focused on topics in game design including design philosophy, narrative structures, and practical issues, as well as providing support for the team projects, while the labs became help sessions in which tutors were available to assist the teams in their module development

In 2006, all educational psychology content was taught in a traditional lecture format. In 2007, half of the topics were taught using Neverwinter Nights, while in 2008, they all were. Modules were developed by the AGR research team, with some initial ideas derived from student suggestions.

Download Course Materials

You may download the tutorials used to teach students about the Aurora toolkit in Neverwinter Nights here. See below for license. If you’re interested in more details about the course, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

• Download Neverwinter Nights tutorials

The Game

The game told the story of a student working his way through a fantastical university styled after the University of Canterbury, and employed a variety of techniques to engage with student-players, including humour, mini-games, toy simulations, and competition. It was divided into several sub-modules, each corresponding to a particular educational topic and oriented around a different university department; computer science for models of memory, psychology for topics in cognitive psychology, and a field trip for flow. Sub-modules were held together and unified into a single game with a HUB module that guided student-players through the course as a whole, as well as processing student performance in each sub-module into game-level rewards.

Downloading and Playing

We chose to hand out portions of the game to student-players at a rate of one per week so that the whole class would be roughly at the same point at any time. In order to play, however, student-players needed a complete set of modules so that they couldn’t accidentally ‘depart’ the game world by attempting a topic yet to be handed out. To resolve this, we created a set of place-holder modules that were distributed along with the HUB module. As the class progressed, these place-holder modules were replaced with actual course content.

As a result, you can choose to either download the full game in its playable version, or download it in parts so that you might release it progressively as we did.

The modules were developed for Neverwinter Nights version 1.69. No add-ons (such as Shadows of Undrentide or Hordes of the Underdark) are required. Any version of Neverwinter Nights should be able to be automatically updated to version 1.69 using the automatic update utility that comes with Neverwinter Nights.

• Custom Objects – necessary HakPak containing custom objects required by the game
• Full game – ready to play, includes all sub-modules
• Hub with place-holders – hub only, requires addition of sub-modules below
• Sub-modules – installable one at a time to overwrite place-holders, thereby controlling how much of the game players have access to. Note that L1 must be playable before student-players can reach L2

To install the modules,

1. Download the Custom Object file
2. Copy the .hak file it contains into the HakPak directory of your Neverwinter Nights installation. The path is likely to be C:\NeverwinterNights\NWN\hak.
3. Download the module package of your choice. Note that you must either download the full package, or download the hub and sub-modules separately.
4. Copy all .mod files into the modules directory of your Neverwinter Nights installation. The path is is likely to be C:\NeverwinterNights\NWN\hak.
   • If you only want to grant partial access to the game’s sub-modules, copy only those sub-modules you wish to grant access to. Keep the rest for later use.

Credits

The following people worked on this project:

• Dr Mick Grimley begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting – Principal Investigator, Primary Course Coordinator, Primary Lecturer, Module Designer
• Trond Nilsen – Lead Module Designer, Aurora Tutorials, Tutor, Lecturer
• Dr Richard Green – Course Coordinator, Lecturer, Design Critique
• David Thompson – Module Designer, Lead Writer, Tutor, Lecturer
• Russell Tomes – Module Designer, Lead Developer, Tutor

In addition, we would like to thank Phil Holland of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering for his technical assistance, and Ilan Schwartz for his assistance with testing.

License

All game modules are available for download and play under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial No-Derivatives licence. If you wish to use them under a more permissive license, such as to modify them for educational re-use, please contact us and we can reach some arrangement.

Educ122 – Games & Education by Applied Games Research Limited is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.
Based on a work at www.applied-games.com.