Learning Through Media: The Presence of Engineering Design Principles in Digital Games 

During the spring of 2024, I took part in a research-based honors experience with four other engineering students from UC under the guidance of Dr. David Evenhouse. We had the opportunity to choose our own project to research and present on. We decided to research how often players of the popular video games Zelda Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK), and Minecraft use the engineering design process. To do this, we each watched videos of people playing these games and scored them based on how often they used various steps of the engineering design process. We also did our own research and found outside resources to validate the use of engineering concepts in these games. We looked into physical concepts such as gravity, friction, and the conservation of momentum to demonstrate how closely the game mechanics were to the real world. We gave a poster presentation on our research at the 2024 Undergraduate Scholarly Showcase at UC. 

I really enjoyed this experience because it gave me a chance to meet some new people studying different engineering disciplines and allowed me to gain some experience with research. I am not sure whether or not I want to work in research in the future, but this experience has helped me better understand what working in research might look like for a career. This experience has also partially shaped my definition of a Global Citizen Scholar. I believe that a Global Citizen Scholar is someone who serves their community or a larger cause using the knowledge and resources that are available to them.