Engineering.com’s STEM games can help develop problem-solving, strategic and communication skills through game-based learning.
“For the most part, our STEM games are targeted towards analytic and logic problem-solving style games such as puzzles and brain teasers for two groups of people. One is students from grade school through high school because of the educational aspects of the games. The other audience is engineering professionals who are just looking to kill some time at lunch,” joked engineering.com’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Semkiw.
With a variety of games such as Dynamic Systems 2, Bridge Designer, Connect IT, circloO, 2048 and many more, engineering.com aims to support game-based learning for both engineering professionals and students.
“We’re regularly adding new games, which can all be found under the engineering.com Resources section,” said Semkiw. “When we first launched the games section, they were originally in Flash, but with the Flash platform being discontinued the format has changed to HTML5. This has spawned a new generation of game developers who are creating exciting new STEM game concepts.”
Children can enjoy solving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) problems while learning important skills. These games are designed for different ability levels to help support the understanding of scientific ideologies and engineering problems as well as to set the standard for bigger math concepts for young children to older teenagers. The games can help the player retain the information they just learned, problem solve and develop language skills as they naturally engage in conversations and experiments using early math concepts.
“I think it gets the kids thinking about problem-solving and patterns, and that’s the main thing that we’re trying to do as teachers just get the kids in a mindset that’s stimulated,” said Jeff Cunningham, a teacher at University High School in Waco, Tex. “The games are a good filler if we have five, ten minutes at the end of class and there’s a lot of kids that are finished with their work.… I’ll also use it as an introduction into something that we’re going to go over, such as the principles of design or elements of design.”
Often, these games are relevant to real-life situations to help students make informed decisions and add hands-on experience that is not available through other types of learning. Since they feel like a form of entertainment, STEM activities can be especially helpful at keeping students focused, communicative and active for up to an hour. They are also more interactive since the games have clear objectives, goals and competition with concrete rewards and consequences.
“I look forward to introducing [games] to the grade four class. They are fully engaged in the different levels, and I find that their ability to apply the knowledge after they have used the site, is increased…. I use the Gear Game to help my students understand how gears turn and how they can be used cooperatively to manipulate other working parts of an engineered item,” noted Bonnie Swainston, a teacher at Alix-MAC School in Alberta, Canada. “Since COVID-19 has affected how many ‘hands-on’ items students can use, this is a wonderful way for them to engage in the classroom as well as being able to bookmark and engage with learning at home.”
“I have a neighbor teacher who teaches bridge-building and he used Cargo Bridge as an introduction to his bridge-building unit. It just gets the kids thinking about how bridges are built, how trusses are structured and placed,” said Cunningham. “A lot of kids like the challenge of it and the way you have to think about it before you play it.… It’s a valuable experience and the kids can really learn a lot from it.”
Games also help students strategize in a group environment and allow them to creatively perform cognitive actions. In fact, games can also lead to higher retention rates than book learning.
For the engineering professional who needs some downtime, STEM games are a great way to keep their brains active. These games can engage and motivate professionals to apply previous knowledge and skills to real-world problems to reach their own goals. They can also enable professionals to refresh their interpersonal communication, teamwork, leadership, decision-making, task prioritizing and stress management skills. When played with other professionals, games can allow the team to collaborate and promote knowledge exchanges.
“When licensing games, we only look for games that are appropriate for engineering.com’s users. These games are safe for educational institutions and contain no in-game advertising. If there is a concept where we cannot find a suitable game, engineering.com will produce a new game. Our objective with the games, as it is with all content on engineering.com, is to inform, inspire and engage engineering minds to be and do better.” said Semkiw.
