Welcome to Tesseract
Welcome to Tesseract--an academic studio at the University of Arkansas focused on immersive environments and game design.
Formed in the auspicious year of 2012, the primary goal of Tesseract is to involve student developers in the process of making “serious” games with a research and/or educational purpose. Since there is no tried-and-true formula for constructing games to teach students about something like Roman civilization, cell biology, or the structure of an atom, part of our goal is to have students engage seriously with how this might be done. Hence the “serious” applies to the process (the making) as it does the outcome (the game).
Our opening observations are:
One, students have generally not been involved in making the educational games that are marketed widely on the model of textbooks, and so they continue to be treated as consumers, excluded from the digital literacy and voice that making games would give them.
Two, the process of making a “serious” game probably has much to teach students that playing educational games does not teach, no matter how good those games are.
In a nutshell, Tesseract brings together students at the University of Arkansas from across the disciplines of History, English, Graphic Design, Architecture, Music, Theatre, Computer Science (and more) with faculty to create interactive 3D content used to teach other students. It is an intentionally homegrown, local solution founded in the believe that using games to transform education needs to be a bottom-up rather than top-down endeavor, designed to teach students 3D technology skills, project management skills, teamwork, and the target content of a given game project...by doing.
While local, it is our belief that this approach can and should be shared, resulting in many universities with many different curricula tied to their students, their communities, and their local schools. To us, this democratization of process seems the best path to positive student and institutional outcomes, since it underscores the active role of students as 3D content creators and storytellers.