Speaker
Description
Special relativity is one of the topics that many undergraduate students struggle to build intuition for, and previous studies have highlighted persistent conceptual difficulties in this area [1-3]. Difficulties stem largely from the fact that it challenges their classical understanding of space and time. Concepts such as simultaneity, reference frames, time dilation, and Lorentz transformations are often mathematically manageable, but conceptually difficult to internalise. To address this, the Special Relativity Battleship (SR Battleship) was developed as a game-based learning tool to encourage more active engagement with these ideas.
The game draws on the familiar Battleship format, but places students in situations where progress depends on reasoning through relativistic scenarios rather than following standard problem-solving procedures. In this way, it creates space for discussion, exploration, and repeated conceptual decision-making. The development of the game and its initial use in undergraduate teaching have been reported previously [4,5].
This presentation focuses on how the platform can be taken up more broadly by educators. In particular, it will show how lecturers can access and deploy the game in their own modules, and how the system is being adapted to allow integration with individual PlayFab backends. Individual integration with the PlayFab backends enables lecturers to manage their own game instances and, where applicable, access basic usage data. If linked to a Microsoft account, gameplay activity and participation trends can also be viewed, which may be useful for classroom monitoring, reflection, and future teaching-focused research.
The session will include a walkthrough of the game interface, the educator setup process, and a discussion of practical considerations for using the tool in a teaching context. More broadly, the work sits within ongoing efforts to use interactive digital tools to support engagement with abstract topics in undergraduate physics.
References
[1] Sherin B L 2001 Cognition and Instruction 19 479–541
[2] Doat N, Ramage M J and Pritchard D E 2007 Am. J. Phys. 75 759–767
[3] Savage C M and Searle A 2010 Eur. J. Phys. 31 1193–1201
[4] Square L 2022 ICERI2022 Proceedings 1619–1625
[5] Square L et al. South African Journal of Higher Education (scheduled for publication) 41(2) Exploring Game-Based Learning in Undergraduate Physics: A Case Study of SR Battleship
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