Professor Gordon Erlebacher is involved in an interdepartmental collaboration to create an educational game that will increase middle students’ math skills. Along with Fengfeng Ke, an Assistant Professor in Educational Psychology and Learning Systems; Matthew Ventura, Senior Research Scientist; and Kathleen Clark, Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education, Erlebacher will create Earthquake Rebuild, an open-source, architecture game. The game will challenge players to manage a budget and consider architectural symmetry and balance while rebuilding a virtual city after an earthquake. Dan Smith, a grad student in Scientific Computing, is one of two students who will work on the project.

The three-year $550,000 grant is divided into three phases. Initially the team will create a project prototype and bring in groups of children and educators to test the game. Second, Earthquake Rebuild will be refined and made functional. Finally, the game will be distributed to additional people who can play and test it.

The finished Earthquake Rebuild will be an open source game, available at no cost to anyone who wants to play.

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