Working Through Impulse

Games may offer a unique opportunity to support and observe intuitive learning that could be foundational for further STEM learning. This paper reports on research of players’ activity in a game, Impulse, that immerses players in the physical laws of Newtonian motion. The aim of this research is to seek evidence of tacit knowledge as it develops through gameplay to see if that tacit knowledge development can eventually be related to players’ learning of the underlying science. This paper reports on the identification of a set of strategic moves that players develop in Impulse as they advance in the game and discusses how those strategic moves may be indicators of implicit cognitive strategies and knowledge develop over time in the game. Researchers are analyzing video from playtesting and engineering features from associated click data to predict strategic moves hypothesized to reflect tacit understanding of Newtonian motion.