Work-in-Progress: Enhancing Students' Interest, Motivation and Academic Abilities using Video Games
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Work-in-Progress:
Enhancing Students’ Interest, Motivation and Academic Abilities
using Video Games
Julius Marpaung, Louis Johnson, William Flanery
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078 USA
Email: {julius.marpaung}, {louis.johnson}, {will.flanery}
@ okstate.edu
Abstract
This paper describes the integration of video games into a digital logic design course at Oklahoma State
University in Fall 2011 to enhance students’ interest, motivation, and academic abilities. Video games
have been used in many different fields and in many universities3-22 and the results are promising
compared to the old approach where students tend to get bored reading textbooks and feel forced to do
lab assignments. The integration is long overdue and we hope that we can attract new students into
electrical and computer engineering.
Key words - Video game; FPGA; digital logic design; music hero; let’s dance
Introduction
Games have been used as a learning tool ever since we were kids1. As illustrated by Bryant Cratty,
different games can be geared to speed up the learning process without eliminating the fun factor1.
These games need to be repeated multiple times so that children can remember and process new
information. Bryant Cratty illustrates several training programs that can be used to help kids to
recognize geometric figures, to remember things, to learn how to read numbers and count them, to learn
mathematics, and to finally be able to read, on chapter 3-9 of his book. William Nesbitt mentions
different kinds of games that can be used in classrooms such as Crisis, The Game of Empire, Market,
The Sumerian Game and The game of Legislature2. He argues that playing different games tends to
teach students a different set of skills such as cooperation and communication in order to win.
In recent years, videos games have been increasingly popular as learning tools in universities and a large
number of publications have consistently shown that video games may be used to enhance students’
interest and enthusiasm3-22. When facing a new interesting challenge, students recognize the importance
of prior knowledge7 and appear to spend more time with the coursework, to be more engaged and see
more value in the course9. Butler-Purry et al also provides references that show that video games teach
deductive reasoning, memory strategies and provide a connection between abstract ideas and their
applications in real world problem solving10.
Engineering can also be taught using other media such as television and radio12. Television and radio
talk shows such as PBS’ National Engineering Week, Discovery Channel’s Extreme Engineering,
History Channel’s Engineering Empire and Modern Marvel, MacGyver, John Lienhard’s Engineering of
2
Our Ingenuity, and William Hammack’s Engineering and Life help in promoting the importance of
engineering12.
Using the knowledge gained by reading the publications on the research conducted in engineering
education3-22 and observing students’ less positive attitude towards the old tradition where they show
lack of interest in listening to their course instructor and reading textbooks, Julius Marpaung has decided
to take the ECEN 3233 Digital Logic Design course to a new level and he believes that teaching and
learning should be fun for him and his students. Prior to teaching the class for the first time, Julius
Marpaung listened to the former students’ complaints, and addressed them. The three main things that
students pointed out were the final project, the execution of the final project, and the discrepancies
between the lectures and the lab assignments. The authors of this paper believe that students should be
allowed to choose one of many projects that interest them and not the one that solely interests the
instructor of the class in order to motivate students even more while following Bloom’s Taxonomy. The
authors also believe that the labs should be built on a top of each other to further utilize the importance
of repetition and prior knowledge. There are six levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remembering,
Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating 23. The first few weeks of the class,
students are expected to satisfy the first three levels as they are exposed to the materials for the first
time. As the class and the lab progress, students are constantly challenged to come up with the most
efficient design to complete their lab assignment and defend it, hence satisfying the next two levels of
Bloom’s Taxonomy: Analyzing and Evaluating. In Lab 9, students must apply all the knowledge gained
in this class to successfully designing their circuit, hence satisfying the highest level of Bloom’s
taxonomy: Creating.
Starting in Fall 2011, ECEN 3233 Digital Logic Design students will have an opportunity to choose one
of many projects as their final project. Some of the projects are Music Hero (MH), Let’s Dance (LD)
and a music synthesizer using FPGA’s (Field Programmable Gate Array). No prerequisite is needed to
enroll in the Digital Logic Design course. In this class, we use a Nexys-2 XC3S500 board. Each board
has 500k gates, 16MB of Micron PSDRAM, 50MHz oscillator, 8 LEDs, a 4-digit seven-segment
display, 4 buttons and 8 slide switches making it a good choice for beginners. Students use Xilinx 12.1
that is available in all engineering labs to do their lab assignments. Students also need to purchase a
DLD lab kit that comes with a 4x4 matrix keypad, a set of resistors and capacitors, a speaker and a set of
jumpers.
Lab Assignments
There are nine lab assignments including a final project that students need to complete in the Digital
Logic Design course. Since no prerequisite is needed to enroll in the Digital Logic Design course, the
course instructor is responsible to provide and explain any schematics given to students. Students are
then expected to build the circuit based on the given schematic while being supervised by at least one of
their teaching assistants.
In Lab 1, students have to build a full adder using Xilinx’s schematic editor, program their FPGA board
and show their working design to their teaching assistant. In this lab, students learn how to design a full
adder using basic logic gates such as AND, OR, NOT, and XOR gates.
Proceedings of the 2011 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education3
In Lab 2, students have to design and implement a seven-segment decoder in order to drive a seven-
segment display. In this lab, students have the opportunity to create a bigger, more structured, and
complicated circuit using basic logic gates covered in Lab 1.
In Lab 3, students learn firsthand how to debug a circuit using Xilinx’s schematic editor. In this lab,
students learn how to debug the instructor’s circuit by using a forward and/or a backward trace
technique. Students find this lab to be helpful and entertaining as there is no single right answer in
solving the puzzle.
In Lab 4, students learn how to generate a tone using a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique. In
this lab, students generate C5 to G6 tones in order with a delay of one second between each tone. The
course instructor explains and provides a speaker driver circuit to students, and students have to build
the circuit with help from a teaching assistant.
In Lab 5 and 6, students learn how to interface their FPGA with a 4x4 matrix keypad. In this lab,
students learn how to debounce their keypad digitally.
In Lab 7, students learn how to put Lab 4-6 together to create a simple keyboard interface. Details
regarding Lab 4 – 7 and the music synthesizer may be found in our paper, Music Synthesizer for Digital
Logic Design24.
In Lab 8, students learn how to interface their FPGA with a monitor using a module from Progressive
Learning Platform (PLP) created by David Fritz, Wira Mulia, and Dr. Sohum Sohoni25. In this lab,
students learn how to display basic figures such as arrows, rectangles, letters and numbers. Due to the
FPGA small memory size (16 MB), students cannot store all of the pixel values in the memory. In order
to use the PLP module to generate a color on a monitor, students need three signals: vertical count
(vcount), horizontal count (hcount) and rgb (red green blue). Vertical and horizontal count signals are
generated by the PLP module for the students’ main module, musichero.v or letsdance.v. In order to
generate a color for a pixel, students need to set rgb, an 8-bit number, to any number between 00000000
and 11111111 where 00000000 refers to black and 11111111 refers to white. The main module will then
send an 8-bit rgb signal to the monitor. A typical refresh rate of a monitor is 60 Hz; hence the maximum
latency for the logic circuit in the FPGA to produce the color for each pixel should be less than 60 Hz /
monitor’s resolution.
In Lab 9 (final lab), students have the option to complete one of the many final projects such as Music
Hero, and Let’s Dance. Music hero is a game in which players use a guitar or drum-shaped game
controller to simulate playing guitar or drums. To receive points, players match in real time the notes
that appear on a monitor to the colored buttons on the game controller. Let’s Dance is a game in which
players must stand on a platform and match the arrows shown on a monitor to the ones on the platform
by stepping on them at the right moment to receive points.
The Digital Logic Design course does not cover pipelining, Central Processing Unit (CPU) nor Graphics
Processing Unit (GPU) design in great detail. Hence, students are not expected to design a GPU for their
final project. For the Music Hero project, students are not expected to complete a full 3D perspective
view as shown in Figure 1 left side due to the limitation of the number of gates in FPGA. Since
Proceedings of the 2011 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education4
designing a GPU is out of the scope of this class, the next best thing that students can do is to draw only
the 2D bottom of the box in Figure 1 right side.
Figure 1: Music Hero drawing using One-Point Perspective (left side) and Monitor output for Music
Hero (right side)
The monitors in Figure 1 are assumed to be 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels high. To generate a note to
appear on the right monitor, two line equations are needed to define its width. To produce the depth of
the note, a programmer can set the value of hcount to a predefined number. A counter is used to track
the position of the note. A simple line equation can be used to draw lines between two end points, for
example the line between (40,479) and (280, 239). Assume that x1 = 40, y1 = 479, x2 = 280 and y2 = 239.
To find the slope of the line (m), one can use:
m = (y2 – y1) / (x2 – x1)
m = (239 - 479) / (280 - 40) = -1
The point-slope form then becomes:
y – y2 = m (x - x2)
y – 239 = -1 (x - 280)
y = 519 - x
The following is the implemented Verilog code:
if ( (hcount >= 40 && hcount5
Figure 2: Basic Arrows for Let’s Dance (left side) and Monitor output for Let’s Dance (right side)
In general, having multiple blocks/arrows at one given time requires more resources hence increasing
the number of gates. At the end, students have to have enough gates for the display, the sound and the
controller (to debounce the guitar/drum and/or Let’s Dance pad) to complete their final lab assignment
just using one FPGA. Figure 3 shows the flowchart for the Music Hero and Let’s Dance project.
Start
Fetch information
Generate a tone
about blocks/
and accumulate
arrows from
points
memory
No
Generate blocks/
arrows and
display them
Last block/
arrow?
Track the position
of each block/
arrow Yes
No Output final score/
grade
Block/arrow Yes
at their final
destination?
End
Figure 3: Flowchart for Music Hero/Let’s Dance
Students are free to come up with their own design for the music instrument and dance pad for the
Music Hero and Let’s Dance project respectively.
Proceedings of the 2011 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education6
Assessment
To assess our new video games model, we look forward to see how much time students spend on the
course work, the level of enthusiasm and interest generated, and the overall course satisfaction using a
survey given to students at the start and the end of the semester. At the beginning of the semester, we
take an inventory of students’ prior knowledge, interest regarding the course and video games, and
course objectives. At the end of the semester, we gather feedback from the students about the
effectiveness of the final project in supporting the class materials and course objectives, and the level of
students’ enthusiasm in completing the final project. Julius Marpaung realizes that some students are not
good test takers, hence opening the possibility of having an oral exam to support/replace a written test.
A study also needs to be made in regards to future students’ exam and lab performance in comparison
with former students. This class is still a work in progress and it already has received good feedback
from its former students in regard to the new video games model through the main ECEN Facebook
account. Information or comment regarding our recent activities and videos may be found at
http://www.facebook.com/osuece.
Conclusion
Video games have been integrated into our society for many decades and were initially developed for
entertainment purposes only. As technology advances, more and more educators have found video
games as one of many learning tools at their disposal. The availability of many modern FPGAs and
embedded processors at an affordable price has opened many interesting projects of which many former
educators could have only dreamed. Often time students find that programming or engineering classes
are hard to understand due to their lack of interest. It is up to the educators to keep up with the recent
technology to bridge any gaps between their class and students. We believe that our new revamped
ECEN 3233 Digital Logic Design at Oklahoma State University will be interesting to incoming
freshmen and we sincerely believe that this class will be better and better over time.
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Biographical Information
JULIUS J. MARPAUNG, OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Julius is a doctoral student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department focusing in Computer
Architecture, Engineering Education, and Video Game Design, and has earned a certificate in University
Faculty Preparation program. He has been the instructor for the Digital Logic Design course for two years, and
is eager to teach a GPU class in the future.
LOUIS G. JOHNSON, OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Louis Johnson, an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department serves as
Julius Marpaung’s advisor. Dr. Johnson received his Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral degrees from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his research topics include Computer Architecture, VLSI
Systems Design, and Robotics.
WILLIAM M. FLANERY, OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
William Flanery is an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Oklahoma
State University with an expected graduation in 2013. His fields of interest include Computer Architecture,
Engineering Education, and Video Game Design. He is interested in pursuing a career in industry for CPU and
GPU design.
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