The Physics Alive Podcast

Episode #10

Sector Vector with James O'Brien

Board games in the classroom? Absolutely! In this episode I talk with Interim Dean and Associate Professor James O’Brien, co-founder of 4th Law Labs, a company dedicated to making education more accessible and more enjoyable.  We discuss the games Sector Vector and Resistile, gamification of education, and an innovative collaboration that brought physics and industrial design students together.

Watch Brad’s unboxing of Sector Vector.

Today's Guest:
James O'Brien

James O’Brien is the Interim Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and an Associate Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Springfield College in Western Massachusetts. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Connecticut in 2010, and his research focuses on theoretical and computational astrophysics, cosmology, and gravity. He serves as the Vice President of the International Association of Relativistic Dynamics. His passion for teaching has lead him to pursue educational pedagogies through gamification of education. He’s a member of the company 4th Law Labs and helped to design Sector Vector and Resistile, two competitive tabletop games, which engage students in an exciting atmosphere to help facilitate learning of essential physics concepts.

Today we talk about these two games, gamification of education, and an innovative collaboration that brought physics and design students together.

Episode Notes and Resources

Check out 4th Law Labs!

Sector Vector is for sale now. Enter coupon code: Vect0r (note: 0 instead of o)

Discussion about Sector Vector:

  • Designed to replace a traditional 2-3 hour lab with Force Tables.
  • Using a full period allows time for students to learn the game, select teams, and complete more than one game.
    • You can complete 3 full games in a 2-hour lab, and 5 full games in a 3-hour lab.
  • Up to 8-players can play on a single copy of the came. So 3 or 4 copies would suffice for a typical lab of 20-30 students.
  • Graded or ungraded? The company provides some recommendations in their lab kit.
    • They do recommend a grading system. For example: most points for win, second most for loss, and least for draw. They want students to play to win or lose and not simply go for a draw.
  • Pre- and post- testing results
    • Gains are better when playing Sector Vector versus a force table or map project lab, in both the short term and long term. See these results in the articles that follow.

The following conference papers describe the background of gamification in education and highlight the design process, student experience, and learning gains for Sector Vector and Resistile:

Gamification of learning:

  • It’s a very broad term. To 4th Law Labs, it means that there is a physical, hands-on gaming experience that you can learn from, as opposed to a learning environment that looks like a game.

Where to find more info:

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