Abstract:

Traditionally, teaching Process Design in design discipline relies heavily on Case Study or Studio Practice with learning-by-doing approach. Case Study is good to have a controllable setup of cases embedded with relevant learning materials that will confide the scope of study in approaching the issue. However, the success of case study relies on the motivation of students in engaging themselves to be part of the scenario and feedback from the instructor is normally qualitative. Studio Practice with learning-by-doing approach is an effective method to provide students with the understanding of the process design cycle and the problem solving techniques. However, learning-by-doing might sometimes not be an efficient method in teaching and learning for it usually takes up a long time to carry out the result. By introducing game in such teaching environment might be an alternative to improve the teaching and learning experience.

Process Design incorporated the knowledge of generic process development for design work. It includes procedures to (1) specify the objective of the process; (2) identify the criteria and constraints of the process; (3) generate tasks according to the criteria and constraints identified; (4) select the appropriate tasks or sequence of tasks according to the criteria and constraints; (5) implement the tasks and (5) evaluate and adjust the objective, criteria and constraints. The paper describes the finding of a research project that incorporated Game Based Learning in a process design curriculum. Games were purposely developed to incorporate the complexity of process design cycle for an initial test of students’ ability in developing a model to score the highest marks. Several lectures with review on their gaming strategies and supplemented with cases helped students to explore the theory of process design. By the end of the semester, students played another game with different nature but similar complexity to see if they could apply process design understanding in playing the game. Data generated from the pre-learning game and post-learning game was codified into charts and analyzed. Focus group of students also setup to triangulate the findings from the analysis. Discussion and conclusion was made on the findings of the research.

Keywords:

Process Design, Game Based Learning, Blended Learning.