eCity: Virtual city environment for engineering problem based learning

Game-based learning and Problem-based learning are two different approaches that share some common principles about learning: student motivation and engagement, competence-based development, learning-by-doing, etc. eCity project aims at combining these two approaches to support students on solving engineering problems using an urban simulator environment. In this way, students will be able to tackle with issues such as: mobile network deployment, electricity supply, pollution control, flooding prevention, etc. This paper introduces similar systems and projects considering both the state of the art in urban game platforms and best practices in the use of games to support education. The paper also introduces the engineering games that are being developed in eCity and proposes a problem-based methodology to guide the integration of the proposed problems in the classroom.