HOME I/O: a virtual house for control and STEM education from middle schools to Universities

This paper deals with the result of a R&D project called "DOMUS" partially founded by the French Ministry of National Education in order to design a virtual house adapted to control and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, and usable from middle schools to Universities. The result is software called HOME I/O. It is much more a serious game than a simulation tool which has been designed and developed in order to be adapted to the Y generation. This 3-year R&D project (2011-2014) is a fruitful collaboration between CReSTIC lab from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne and Real Games, a Portuguese company. The main idea has been to bring a virtual house into the class room, adapted to learners and teachers and suitable for control and STEM interdisciplinary education. With this innovative pedagogical tool, the possibilities of pedagogical scenarios in control and STEM education depend only on teachers’ imagination. In this paper, the main ideas which are involved the design of HOME I/O are presented as well as the main features of the software. An experimental stage with 50 teachers from middle and high schools has shown that this kind of tool changes the way to teach and requires new training for teachers.