Quest Atlantis: Advancing a Socially-Responsive, Meta-Game for Learning

他的项目继续致力于建立一个多用户虚拟环境，名为Quest Atlantis，具有学术价值，类似游戏，并吸引小学生参与对社会反应的实践。这笔赠款将进行一系列自然主义研究和实验操作，以提高与支持科学学习的多用户虚拟环境设计有关的理论和实践知识。具体地说，该项目将检验三个假设：第一，在响应性较强的游戏环境中学习学术内容的学生比那些通过没有明确包含游戏成分的教学方法学习的学生学到的东西更多，也更投入。研究的这一部分还将检查，如果学习任务的难度不同，游戏环境是否同样有效，或者在学习和玩耍之间是否存在必要的平衡。其次，参与者，尤其是女孩，当他们的参与处于一个性别平衡的、对社会有反应的游戏环境中时，而不是男性主导的游戏环境中，或者仅仅是没有明确的社会议程的游戏环境中时，他们将获得更多、学到更多并更多地参与其中。第三，参与游戏环境的学生如果利用基于社区的元素，而不是仅仅支持单用户参与，将获得、学习和更多地参与其中。该项目还将对所有条件下的参与情况进行定性说明，特别是对社会负责的游戏条件，以便了解来自不同社会经济群体和不同性别的儿童如何参与和理解元游戏背景下的集体体验。

his project continues work to build a multi-user virtual environment,known as Quest Atlantis, that is academically valuable, game like, andthat engages elementary students in socially-responsive practices. Thisgrant will undertake a series of naturalistic studies and experimentalmanipulations that will advance theoretical and practical knowledge withrespect to the design of multi-user virtual environments for supportingscience learning. Specifically, the project will test three hypotheses:First, that students learning academic content within asocially-responsive gaming context will learn more and be more engagedthan those learning through teaching methods that do not explicitly havea gaming component. This portion of the study will also examine if thegaming context works will work equally well if the academic tasks varyin difficulty or if there is some necessary balance between the amountof learning and playing. Second, participants, especially girls, willachieve and learn more and be more engaged when their participation issituated in a gender-balanced, socially-responsive gaming context asopposed to a male-dominated one, or simply a gaming context without anexplicit social agenda. Third, students participating in a gamingenvironment will achieve, learn and be more engaged if the environmentleverages a community-based element than if it just supports single-userparticipation. The project will also produce qualitative accounts ofparticipation in all conditions, but especially the socially-responsivegaming condition so as to understand how children from differentsocio-economic groups and of different genders come to participate inand make sense of the collective experience of the meta-game context.