Fen3D: Design and development of a 3D game to turn learning into entertainment in science education

Science Education starts in elementary school age. It is the basis for advanced science topics as well as the information that the individual can use throughout life. There fore, correctand complete teaching of subjects and concepts in primary school leads to individual's future education life and life. When students are investigated why they fail in science classes, it is seen that the subjects and concepts that constitute the contents of science courses are composed of abstract and mental thinking information, and these courses are generally abstracted in the curriculum. For this reason, students often find it difficult to understand science courses and may even develop negative attitudes towards the course. Failure of a student in a subject can negatively affect other lessons and the confidence of the student. Taking all these situations into consideration, it will be possible to achieve the desired success in science education only by developing more concrete, effective and amusing teaching methods that take advantage of the power of technology. Within the scope of this thesis, a 3D educational game was developed that aims to make learning fun and permanent, which will facilitate the teaching of difficult subjects, abstract subjects and concepts in science education. The educational content of the game called FEN3D constitutes the subjects and concepts that are included in the Change of Matter Unit of the 5th grade science course. In order to facilitate teaching of these subjects and concepts, special 3D animations have been designed to be used in the game. FEN3D follows the learning performance of the students with the help module that they have and directs them by determining what topic is inadequate. The developed 3D game was implemented with 80 students studying at Alpaslan and Ağrı İmam Hatip Secondary School in the city of Agri. The results show that games developed by combining 3D game and animation technology, pedagogical knowledge and appropriate teaching methodology will provide important contributions to the learning process and academic achievement of the students.