Zodiac is a learning game that is designed to teach middle and high school students about artificial intelligence concepts. Zodiac supports student learning by providing realistic models that learners can explore and interact with. By acting as an AI Agent that explores a network to collect data, players will learn about artificial intelligence concepts such as search, optimization, and machine learning. Available in Chinese and English. 

The goal of this project is to develop the learning activities, curricular materials, and teacher support materials for the Zodiac Game. Zodiac, a game to teach middle school students and high school students about the foundations of artificial intelligence, will be developed by Filament Games in collaboration with NYU CREATE and CyberScape Studios. The game will be released in Fall 2019.

Zodiac’s design is framed by a large body of literature that emphasizes the importance of emotional and experiential activities to engage and support meaningful learning. Learning in Zodiac is designed based on the experiential learning design framework (Plass, Homer, Kinzer 2015). The experiential learning design framework suggests that the best learning happens when learning experiences are active, experiential, situated, meaningful, interest-driven, and personalized. Contemporary research suggests that these values are crucial to facilitate deeper learning and transfer. 

Zodiac is highly interactive and visual, and is very emotionally engaging. Supported by the emotional design of the product, students will be highly engaged and motivated to learn from Zodiac, providing teachers a powerful incentive in their classrooms.