Minecraft as a tool for students to explore the lives of insects in and around their homes

In this work, we evaluate the potential of the video game Minecraft for use as a simplified visual modeling system for urban entomology in education. Minecraft has been used widely in educational settings, due to its massive popularity and its support for the creation of complex interactive 3D structures using a variety of materials. We begin our evaluation by mapping common elements in the game to common elements in real life, including building elements and living things. This is done at two scales, first 1m:1m, then 1m:1cm. We then conduct a learning exercise with undergraduate students, who are asked to consider the lives of arthropods living in and around houses, and then build representations of their lives in Minecraft. Using pre- and post-surveys, we evaluate the impact of the exercise on how the students think about buildings, insects, and the shared built environment. We also examine the Minecraft builds for accuracy and complexity, to evaluate student efficacy in representation of buildings and urban entomology. Results of the activity indicate high engagement and that students working at the smaller scale empathized with arthropod experiences. Our results provide a repeatable generalized method for producing representations of peridomestic ecosystems at an arthropod scale in Minecraft, including a list of mobs and agents with corresponding animals, plants, and building materials. They also demonstrate and assess a learning activity that uses Minecraft to help students conceptualize and build these representations.