Major: Enhancing Creativity and Authoring in STEM Education-Based Virtual Worlds through Concept-Oriented Design

本研究将探讨如何概念导向设计-一种设计和开发复杂的3D用户界面的方法-可以在月球任务，一个大型多人在线游戏（MMOG），旨在支持物理概念的学习。近年来，像魔兽世界这样的MMOG和像第二人生这样的虚拟世界越来越受欢迎，为数百万人提供了数小时的娱乐。考虑到它们的受欢迎程度，很明显，如果正确和建设性地使用，这些虚拟世界和MMOG有可能大大提高科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）教育的学习。学生可以积极参与彼此和世界，以解决反映STEM学科的有趣问题，并在他们无法单独解决的更大问题上进行合作。这些工具不仅提供了有趣的学习环境，而且还为学习过程中的创造力提供了绝佳的机会，学生可以根据自己的知识编写游戏中的任务，这些任务具有有趣的叙述，专注于STEM主题，教育工作者和家长可以监控和指导学习。通过创作这些任务，学生可以通过在协作环境中教授同伴来有效地学习，而教师可以创建令人兴奋的场景，学生可以在课堂之外进行探索。支持虚拟世界和MMOG中的创造力和创作的关键研究挑战是开发一套工具，使学生和教师都可以轻松地创建针对STEM教育的游戏任务，而不需要软件开发和复杂的编程。面向概念的设计侧重于作者设想的行为和会话的因果语言，以开发一个多层次的表示，将指导作者的最终设计和模块化的想法，成为可理解的，可重用的概念。这些概念在运行时执行，维护开发人员因果关系的预期顺序。除了创作工具之外，本研究还使用参与式设计过程来探索如何最好地创作内容并建立开发游戏中任务的最佳实践，这些任务既有奖励性和娱乐性，又能够实现所有参与教学学生的利益相关者都能同意的预期学习目标。最后，该项目将调查概念导向设计的教学意义，因为它涉及到创作月球探索和激发创造力的内容。这项工作有可能使成千上万的初中、高中和大学学生受益。

This research will explore how concept-oriented design - a methodology for the design and development of complex 3D user interfaces - can be utilized in Lunar Quest, a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) designed to support learning of physics concepts. MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, and virtual worlds such as Second Life, have become increasingly popular in recent years, providing hours of entertainment to millions of people. Given their popularity, it is also clear that, if used properly and constructively, these virtual worlds and MMOGs have the potential to significantly enhance learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. Students can actively engage each other and the world to solve interesting problems that reflect STEM disciplines and collaborate on larger problems they individually could not solve. These vehicles not only provide interesting learning environments, but also present an excellent opportunity for creativity in the learning process where students, based on their knowledge, can author in-game quests with intriguing narratives that focus on STEM topics, and educators and parents can monitor and guide learning. By authoring these quests, students can effectively learn though teaching their peers in a collaborative setting while teachers can create exciting scenarios that students can explore beyond the classroom.The key research challenge in supporting creativity and authoring in virtual worlds and MMOGs is developing a set of tools which make it easy for both student and teacher to create in game quests tailored to STEM education without the need for software development and complex programming. Concept-oriented design focuses on the author's envisioned behavior and conversational causal language, to develop a multi-tiered representation that will guide authors to their final design and modularizes ideas into understandable, reusable concepts. These concepts are executed at runtime, maintaining the intended ordering of the developer's causal relationships. In addition to authoring tools, this research also use a participatory design process to explore how best to author content and establish best practices for developing in-game quests that are rewarding and entertaining, yet are able to achieve intended learning goals that all stakeholders involved with teaching students can agree upon. Finally, the project will investigate the pedagogical implications of concept-oriented design as it relates to authoring content in Lunar Quest and sparking creativity. This work has the potential to benefit thousands of students at the middle, high school, and college levels.