[GAMBIT-UROPS-summon] Summer UROPs: Designing and Prototyping an MMO for Science and Math Learning

[Richard Eberhardt]

Summer UROPs: Designing and Prototyping an MMO for Science and Math Learning

Department/Program: MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Eric Klopfer
Direct Supervisor: Louisa Rosenheck

Our group is in the early stages of designing an MMOG (massively
multiplayer online game) to help high schoolers learn math and
science. The game will incorporate many elements of a typical MMO and
specifically help them explore the areas of biology, geometry,
probability, and statistics. See a brief description of the project
here:
http://education.mit.edu/blogs/louisa/2012/pressrelease

We are working with an external educational games production company
who will be developing the final product but we are already working on
designing various aspects of the game and creating rapid prototypes in
order to refine our ideas and test them with users. We're looking for
students to work on the project for 20-40 hours/week during the summer
(mostly in lab during business hours) with the option to continue with
a fall semester UROP. Positions can be for pay or credit and there are
two main roles we are looking to fill:

Game Designer
Use our existing design framework/templates to build out the game
content and make it come to life! This is a creative position
including a wide variety of tasks such as writing narrative and quest
text, designing quests and quest mechanics, designing tools including
their function and UI, incorporating educational standards into
gameplay, designing world locations, objects, characters, creatures,
and anything else that comes up. The key is to understand the
educational goals behind the game and be able to translate them into a
world that guides students to explore and have fun with the concepts.
Pluses for this position are experience with game design, education,
MMOs, and user testing.

Prototype Developer
Develop rapid prototypes of world systems, quest mechanics, and tools,
most likely using our existing Flash prototyping environment. Must
have programming experience, including knowledge of Actionscript (or
be able to get up to speed on it quickly). Prototypes will be
developed with FlashBuilder and will involve significant UI design.
Other pluses for this position are an interest in education and
educational games, familiarity with MMOs, experience or interest in
user testing, and ability to support other UROPs on the team.

If interested, please send an email to tep-jobs at mit.edu describing why
you are interested in this project and what relevant experience you
have, as well as your attached resume. Thanks!