At present, the pool of engineers in the US is not large or diverse enough to meet the needs of a growing high-tech community and produce solutions to the difficult problems our country faces both nationally and internationally. Therefore, harnessing the power of new educational innovations to improve the teaching of engineering students is a top priority. To meet the demand for highly trained engineers in the United States, universities must begin using recent improvements in educational technology to reform how engineers are taught and trained. As part of this commitment to improving the education of engineering students, the Epistemic Games Group, in conjunction with our partners in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is developing Nephrotex: The Dialysis Redesign Project. This game will be used in undergraduate engineering courses to provide students with important engineering design and nanotechnology-related skills. It also provides us with an opportunity to study how students learn through the use of computer games, as opposed to traditional classroom methodologies.
This program will train students in the engineering approach to problem-solving even before they have the full complement of engineering skills and knowledge. Our game, which simulates actual professional practices, will help undergraduates acquire and use skills not typically utilized by gateway math and science courses. Furthermore, our computer game approach is tailored to the skills and interests of the newest, highly tech-savvy group of engineering students. By providing a more authentic picture of what engineering work is really like in an appealing and novel package, we hope to encourage more students to stay in the field, thus increasing the number and diversity of engineering professional in the US.
