From Plug-and-Chug to Design Optimization Through Gaming

49% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 own a smartphone (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2011).  This, combined with growing rates of tablet adoption, enables students to perform on-the-fly computation that was previously impossible for campuses without required laptops.   We now can add very short-term design / optimization ‘games’ that fit into the same class time previously required for in-class examples.  By encouraging students to move rote equation application onto a mobile computing device, students can access higher Bloom levels by comparing results over a wide range of conditions rather than the single condition accessible in a ‘by hand’ calculation.  While this has been possible for many years in computing labs, making use of mobile platforms enables rapidly deployed or spur of the moment ‘games’ where student groups explore a parameter space for optimal conditions.   I will present several examples of these short-term games from Thermodynamics and elective courses.