The Simulation Cycle: combining games, simulations, engineering and science using StarLogo TNG

StarLogo The Next Generation (TNG) enables secondary school students and teachers to model decentralized systems through agent-based programming. TNG's inclusion of a three- dimensional graphical environment provides the capacity to create games and simulation models with a first-person perspective. The authors theorize that student learning of complex systems and simulations can be motivated and improved by transforming simulation models of complex systems phenomena (specifically this study examines systems including epidemics and Newtonian motion) into games. Through this transformation students interact with the model in new ways and increase their learning of both specific content knowledge and general processes such as inquiry, problem solving and creative thinking. During this study several methods for connecting the simulations to game dynamics were tried, ranging from student-created games, to altering existing games, to students playing pre- made games. This article presents the results of research data from two years of curriculum development and piloting in northern Massachusetts science classrooms to demonstrate the successes and challenges of integrating simulations and games. This article also explores the results of these interventions in terms of ease of implementation, student motivation and student learning. Two teams are building models of virtual worlds. They each need to consider the relevant aspects of the world that they want to represent, focusing on what is important for their purposes, and what is superfluous. They also need to consider how they will provide appropriate inputs into their system and understand the output of their models, including whether the feedback that the models provide is clear. Each team needs to cleverly devise algorithms that appropriately represent the actions and behaviors of the inhabitants of their virtual world, and investigate the outcomes that they observe. In many ways the actions of these two teams are indistinguishable. However, as the products progress, the differences become more pronounced - one team is developing and studying a simulation of warming seas designed to help scientists save endangered species; the other is building a jet ski racing game designed to entertain. Both of these products require good initial models of fluid dynamics, tide flow, buoyancy, and many other physical parameters as a starting place. They may both incorporate information about how weather impacts the oceans - either to make the simulation more accurate or to make the game more exciting. The simulation requires important biological parameters to describe the ocean inhabitants, whereas the game requires important physical information to simulate the behavior of the jet ski under different ocean conditions. Of course there are distinct differences between the way the game and the simulation are developed and studied. These differences allow the simulation to be more predictive, and the game to be more engaging. But perhaps they are more similar than distinct. It is this connection between the design and building of games and simulations that motivates the research and development of our Simulations, Systems and Computational Literacy (SSCL) curriculum and the corresponding tool, StarLogo The Next Generation (TNG). Simulations are an