Gamifying a Simulation to Improve Understanding and Attitudes Towards Electric Fields

Because electric fields cannot be touched or seen, simulations are often utilized to enhance students' understanding of them by providing them with a visual representation of electric fields and the motion of test charges within them. We built and tested an electric field "sandbox" simulation that dynamically represents the electric field lines, field vectors, equipotential lines, and the voltage of the charges that the user places anywhere on the screen. After building this, we gamified the simulation with the intent of further improving motivation and engagement in the material. The goal of the game is to guide a test charge through a racetrack using an electric field that the player creates. Both the game and the simulation that we created before it are built in JavaScript, so they will run on most browsers on a computer or mobile device. Results and student feedback from a subsequent controlled study of the efficacy of these instructional tools will also be discussed. The results indicated that no individual tool was significantly more effective than the others, but pre- to post-diagnostics were significant across all three groups.