Since June of
last year, I have been working with Professor Chris Kauffman on the development
of a game designed as an educational tool. The AIDS Educational Game is
intended for use in a college biology classroom, and demonstrates several
stages of HIV infection at a molecular level. The eventual goal is to study
whether using the program helps students to understand the material better than
they would using more traditional methods.
My main role on
this project is writing the actual code for the software, and gradually testing
it as development advances. The program is written in Java, but we are using a framework
that allows the software to be run in many different ways, including as an
in-browser app. As a Computer Science major, this gives me a lot of insight
into how multiple tools can be integrated together for use in one project, and
how my coding skills can be applied to real-world problems. Working as an
undergraduate research assistant has given me the opportunity to explore the
idea of introducing new technologies to the classroom, and testing the
effectiveness of the methods of teaching that these technologies present.
I am also
learning how small design decisions early on in development can have a huge
impact on the eventual product and its quality. Recently, I faced a challenge
caused by flawed assumptions in the design of one aspect of the program, and as
a result, I had to re-assess our approach to a new feature I was about to
implement.
