CI-TEAM Demo: Collaborative Games for Bioinformatics Education

生物信息学教育合作游戏这个示范项目将利用对在线合作和多玩家游戏开发的社会情感机制的最新研究，以及BuddyPress现有的社交网络结构，创建一种新颖的教育游戏，它结合了生物信息学和网络基础设施(CI)的概念，面向初中生和早期高中生。在美国，对STEM领域和传播与信息领域的兴趣和参与正在下降，特别是在代表人数不足的少数族裔和妇女方面。研究表明，人们对STEM领域的兴趣通常早在中学就开始丧失，此外，对这些领域的兴趣必须及早产生，这样才能吸引他们进入本科及以后的阶段。鉴于目前K-12课程的资金紧张，教师很难与学生一对一地交流，以鼓励他们学习网络技术和解决问题。近年来开发的许多教育游戏都带有社交网络组件，已经接触到了不同规模的观众。然而，很少有这些课程是专门为教授CI概念而设计的。此外，目前还不清楚到底是什么让一款教育游戏吸引人，也不清楚社交网络游戏必须设计哪些元素才能使其广泛传播并具有较长的寿命。情感或情感在计算机和游戏技术中的作用只是最近才走到了前列。最近的研究表明，人们玩游戏是因为他们刺激情绪的方式。研究人员已经确定了游戏诱导情绪的关键领域，并指定了设计游戏机制来唤起每一种情绪的方法。这种方法是新颖的，不仅因为它将教授生物信息学和CI，还因为它专注于在多玩家环境中激发情感。PI将利用这些情绪来增强点对点学习，并分析玩家体验的结果。这项工作还将由皮埃尔？S之前对儿童之间在线合作的社会情感方面的研究以及在CI中进行的科学合作提供信息。此外，研究小组将利用BuddyPress(Buddypress.org)现有的社交网络结构，这是一个已被下载超过392,000次的开源社交网络平台，以促进游戏开发。通过将协作、积极情绪和社交网络与游戏的教育部分联系起来，团队将向学生展示网络解决问题可以是有趣和吸引人的。它们将使更多的年轻人接触到CI概念，并在年轻人定义自我认同的关键年龄对STEM职业产生更大的兴趣。智力上的功绩。该项目将对教育社交网络游戏开发以及eScience和CI的教育组成部分的研究做出新的经验和概念上的贡献。从经验上讲，该项目将提供对年轻人如何使用和采用协作教育游戏、他们如何在情感上参与主题以及如何设计此类游戏以支持多种目的的理解。从概念上讲，这个项目建立在PI之前关于构建科学CI和研究在线协作的情感维度的研究之上。这将创建一个框架，以了解如何利用情感来开发非传统的CI教育手段。更广泛的影响。该游戏不仅将利用社交网络让更多的年轻人接触到CI和生物信息学问题的解决，并直接激励学生对CI/生物信息学职业感兴趣，而且它还将提供信息、支持和刺激未来教育游戏的发展，以支持CI学习。通过加深对游戏受欢迎原因的理解，并将这种理解应用到社交网络CI教育游戏中，该项目将为如何在STEM领域吸引更多的年轻学生提供独特和及时的见解。为了让代表性不足的少数民族和妇女更多地参与该项目，该小组正在利用西北生物医学研究协会(NWABR)的服务，专门向代表性不足的群体中的教师和学生提供外联服务。这项研究对社会的长期好处包括特别在年轻的少数族裔和妇女中接受网络问题解决的概念，以及产生概念模型，这些模型将更好地理解人、教育游戏和更广泛的基础设施计算技术之间的更大关系。

Collaborative Games for Bioinformatics Education This Demonstration Project will leverage recent research into the socio-emotional mechanics of online collaboration and multi-player game development, and the existing social networking structure of BuddyPress, to create a novel educational game that incorporates bioinformatics and cyberinfrastructure (CI) concepts aimed at middle school and early high school students. Interest in and participation in STEM fields and CI in the US is declining, specifically with regard to underrepresented minorities and women. It has been shown that the loss of interest in STEM fields often occurs as early as middle school, and additionally, that interest in such fields must be generated early for their appeal to continue into the undergraduate level and beyond. Given current K-12 funding constraints, it can be difficult for teachers to spend one-on-one time with students to encourage them to learn about cyber-technology and problem solving. Many educational games have been developed in recent years with a social networking component that have reached audiences of varying sizes. However, few of these have been designed specifically to teach CI concepts. Further, it is not yet clearly understood exactly what makes an educational game compelling, nor what elements must be designed into a social networking game to enable it to spread widely and have a long lifetime. The role of affect or emotion in computing and in game technology is only recently coming to the forefront. Recent studies have demonstrated that people play games because of the way they stimulate their emotions. Researchers have identified key areas of game-induced emotions and specified means to design game mechanics to evoke each of these emotions. This approach is novel not only because it will teach bioinformatics and CI, but because it focuses on eliciting emotions in a multi-player environment. The PIs will utilize these emotions to enhance peer-to-peer learning, and analyze the outcomes of the player experience. This work will be additionally informed by the PI?s previous research into the socio-emotional aspects of online collaboration among children and in CI for scientific collaborations. Further, the research team will leverage the existing social networking structure of BuddyPress (buddypress.org), an open source social networking platform that has been downloaded over 392,000 times, to facilitate game development. By linking collaboration, positive emotions, and social networking to the educational component of the game, the team will show students that cyber problem solving can be fun and engaging. They will expose more young people to CI concepts and generate more interest in STEM careers at a critical age where young people are defining their self-identity. Intellectual Merit. This project will make novel empirical and conceptual contributions to research in educational social networking game development and the educational component of eScience and CI. Empirically this project will provide an understanding of how young people use and adopt collaborative educational games, how they become emotionally involved in the subject matter, and how to design such games to support multiple purposes. Conceptually this project builds on the PI's previous research on architecting scientific CI and researching the emotional dimensions of online collaboration. This will create a framework for understanding how emotions can be leveraged to develop non-traditional means of CI education. Broader Impacts. The game will not only leverage social networking to expose larger numbers of young people to CI and bioinformatics problem solving and directly motivate students to become interested in CI/bioinformatics careers, but it will also inform, support, and stimulate the development of future educational games to support CI learning. By developing a deeper understanding of what makes a game popular, and by the application of this understanding to a social networking CI educational game, this project will provide unique and timely insights into how to engage a broader community of young students in STEM fields. To increase the participation of underrepresented minorities and women in the project, the team is leveraging the services of the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) to provide outreach specifically to teachers and students in underrepresented groups. The long-term benefits of this research to society include the uptake of concepts of cyber problem solving specifically among young underrepresented minorities and women, and the production of conceptual models that will give better understanding of the larger relationships between people, educational games, and infrastructural computational technologies more generally.