TY - GEN
T1 - Minecraft as a Generative Platform for Analyzing and Practicing Spatial Reasoning
AU - Andrus, Brian
AU - Bar-El, David
AU - Msall, Camille
AU - Uttal, David
AU - Worsley, Marcelo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - As excitement for Minecraft continues to grow, we consider its potential to function as an engaging environment for practicing and studying spatial reasoning. To support this exposition, we describe a glimpse of our current analysis of spatial reasoning skills in Minecraft. Twenty university students participated in a laboratory study that asked them to recreate three existing buildings in Minecraft. Screen captures of user actions, together with eye tracking data, helped us identify ways that students utilize perspective taking, constructing mental representations, building and place-marking, and error checking. These findings provide an initial impetus for further studies of the types of spatial skills that students may exhibit while playing Minecraft. It also introduces questions about how the design of Minecraft activities may promote, or inhibit, the use of certain spatial skills.
AB - As excitement for Minecraft continues to grow, we consider its potential to function as an engaging environment for practicing and studying spatial reasoning. To support this exposition, we describe a glimpse of our current analysis of spatial reasoning skills in Minecraft. Twenty university students participated in a laboratory study that asked them to recreate three existing buildings in Minecraft. Screen captures of user actions, together with eye tracking data, helped us identify ways that students utilize perspective taking, constructing mental representations, building and place-marking, and error checking. These findings provide an initial impetus for further studies of the types of spatial skills that students may exhibit while playing Minecraft. It also introduces questions about how the design of Minecraft activities may promote, or inhibit, the use of certain spatial skills.
KW - Eye-tracking
KW - Learning environments
KW - Perspective-taking
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090176838&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-57983-8_22
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-57983-8_22
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85090176838
SN - 9783030579821
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 297
EP - 302
BT - Spatial Cognition - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference, Spatial Cognition 2020
A2 - Skilters, Jurgis
A2 - Newcombe, Nora S.
A2 - Uttal, David
PB - Springer
CY - Switzerland
T2 - 12th International Conference on Spatial Cognition, SC 2020
Y2 - 26 August 2020 through 28 August 2020
ER -