A Simulation Game in Mineral Exploration: A Mineral Adventure from Exploration to Exploitation

The simulation as an educational tool is used in the last decades to reinforce scientific knowledge and teach decision-making skills. Surgery and flight simulators are the most known tools to practice and training in safety surgeries and pilots, while the development of simulation games makes progress in other scientific fields such as economics, management, engineering, and mathematics. Simulations enable the learners to apply and develop scientific knowledge and skills in virtual scenarios without risk and enhance the learning process using animation, graphics and an interactive environment. In engineering, although simulation is widely used as a powerful tool of education, simulations with interactive environments and strategies are rarely developed. The difficulty in programming engineering concepts and theories is the main reason for that inconsistency. The present work demonstrates a simulation game in mineral exploration developed by the authors and explains the basic features of the application. The application is based on the generation of random scenarios, while the user applies a strategy according to his knowledge and considering the randomness of physical phenomena. The simulation game is adopted as an educational tool in the course “Introduction to Mineral Exploration” in the school of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering of National Technical University of Athens. Moreover, the outcomes of the game analytics and a qualitative evaluation resulting from three workshops in higher education institutions in Greece is presented.

Keywords: Simulation game; Serious game; Active learning; Interactive simulation; Problem based learning; Mineral exploration; Decision making skills