Early project based learning improvements via a "star trek engineering room" game framework, and competition

In this work, we show how providing a constrained project framework for a second year digital design course improves the number of working student projects from 55% to 86%. Instead of an open-ended project as in previous years, we introduce an optional project framework, called "Redhawk Duels". Redhawk Duels is a game framework in which students design control algorithms and interfaces for a virtual ship. Once a competition begins, two opposing groups and their respective ships attempt to incapacitate the opposing ship by finding the opponent, shooting them, and budgeting their energy accordingly. Fifteen of the twenty-one groups in the 2010 class participated in Redhawk Duels for their final project, and 86% of these projects were working and demonstrated with sufficient complexity. The remaining six groups chose to implement open-ended projects and had a 66% success rate. This rate is similar to the 55% success rate of the 2009 class which were all open-ended projects. We surveyed the students involved to see how they felt the project helped them and how much they enjoyed the activity. The results show that the students strongly agree that participating in the framework motivated them and will help them in future engineering design projects.