Abstract
AbstractThe decline of fresh‐enrolled students and the increase in the number of dropouts in electrical engineering schools might be related to motivation, engagement and differences in learning preferences. This paper provides a detailed description of the development, application, and evaluation of an online, asynchronous simulation game to teach electricity markets concepts named EMGA. The EMGA aims to introduce students to the short‐term electricity market structure, highlighting the importance of forecasting tools for decision‐making. The EMGA has been deployed in a Master's course with 27 students. The learning effectiveness was assessed with a survey at the end of the exercise. Questions aiming at experience generation, conceptual understanding, skills development and affective evaluation were enquired. Positive results towards experience generation, conceptual understanding and affective evaluation were obtained. Students felt optimistic about the platform's potential. The main complaints from students were their lack of programming experience and the allocated time for the exercise during the course. Results from this small test, along with previously obtained results, are encouraging and might be of potential use for further developing the EMGA and student's experience.
Highlights
This paper presents a detailed description of the development, application, and evaluation of an online, asynchronous, simulation game to teach electricity markets concepts, named Electricity Markets Game (EMGA)
This paper presented the development, application, and evaluation of an asynchronous‐competitive simulation game for teaching electricity markets
The simulation game was applied in a Master's course with 27 students as a complementary tool to traditional lectures
Summary
Engineering has been catalogued as an enabler and driver of economic and social development. Some economic forecasts, as the one in [29], report that the United States should increase the annual number of students receiving undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by 34% to meet the workforce requirements of future years. The last category addresses factors such as students' low levels of self‐efficacy and self‐confidence and their relationship with the climate of engineering classrooms (competitive, individualistic). It cannot be said that it is sufficient to replace traditional instruction, GBL opens opportunities for learning to be experiential, dynamic, situated, problem‐based, and that it allows for immediate feedback. Electronic components, electrical machines, and electrical appliances allow hands‐on experiences, other theoretical subjects, such as electricity markets, might be more complex to emulate in a classroom environment In this sense, electrical engineering programs may benefit from applying GBL
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