DIP: BioSourcing: A Crowdsourcing Approach to Increasing Public Understanding in Computational Biosciences

该项目探讨了一个假设，即基于当代科学的引人注目的学习游戏提供了促进科学探究的机会，这将导致对科学的兴趣增加，科学的职业选择增加，对科学内容的概念理解增加，以及围绕科学家所做的更好的科学素养。这个想法是利用众包来阐明开放的科学问题的答案，并以有意义的方式让公众参与真实和必要的科学探究。PI将扩展已经设计和建造或正在建造的四个游戏，并开发一个支持广泛参与的科学游戏的平台，为公众提供为科学探究做出贡献的机会。所选择的游戏都鼓励持续和深入的参与，包括学徒机会和实践真正科学的机会，促进行动中的反思，并旨在情感上引人注目。游戏有四种类型：角色扮演、策略、动作和益智，因为不同的人会被不同类型的体验所吸引。所有这些游戏都涉及生物科学和生物技术领域，每个游戏都解决了生物科学或生物技术领域的一些悬而未决的问题，参与者可能会对此有所了解。游戏的范围很广，有几个目的--提供了足够多的体验，可以期待广泛的参与者加入，提供足够的多样性以了解将游戏捆绑在一起的基础设施具有支持广泛的此类游戏所需的所有功能，并提供足够的多样性来回答有针对性的研究问题。研究的重点是确定在创建一个广泛和多样化的公共游戏社区，与更正式和建立的科学和教育文化互动，学习如何在这样的环境中发生，以及如何促进持续参与和深度学习，确定核心功能和机制的游戏，促进持续参与和科学学习的挑战，以及理解所研究的特定游戏中有助于持续参与和学习的设计特征。科学家们越来越意识到，许多当代科学问题需要（或可以从中受益匪浅）积极参与的公众。传播科学的挑战和机遇，动员公众参与和支持科学探究，需要对科学的价值观、方法和认识论（例如，观察、数据收集和分析、证据推理、怀疑论）。该项目的重点是设计既有吸引力又能提供科学知识的学习机会。公众被邀请参加各种与科学有关的“游戏”，体验科学探究，这些游戏引人入胜，令人兴奋，有助于科学发现。参与者作为科学家参与，进行科学家的实践和推理证据得出结论，在这个过程中经历了科学发现和探索中的激动和挫折。调查人员观察这些游戏的参与者，以得出设计额外学习经验的原则，这些经验可以让公众参与科学，同时促进科学素养和学习。在这项分析中学到的东西也将适用于设计在学校使用的吸引人的科学经验。

This project explores the hypothesis that compelling learning games based on contemporary science that offer opportunities to contribute to scientific inquiry will lead to increased interest in science, increased career choice of science, increased conceptual understanding of science content, and better scientific literacy around what scientists do. The idea is to capitalize on crowd sourcing both to shed light on the answers to open scientific questions and to engage the public in authentic and needed scientific inquiry in meaningful ways. The PIs will extend four games that are already designed and built or that are under construction and develop a platform for supporting a broad range of participatory science games that offer the public opportunities to contribute to scientific inquiry. The chosen games all encourage sustained and deep participation, include apprenticeship opportunities and opportunities for practicing authentic science, promote reflection in and on action, and are designed to be emotionally compelling. Games come from four game genres: role-playing, strategy, action, and puzzle, as different people are drawn to different types of experiences. All are in the areas of bioscience and biotechnology, and each addresses some open question in bioscience or biotechnology that participants might shed light on. The broad range of games serves several purposes -- offering a substantial enough range of experiences that a broad range of participants can be expected to join in, offering enough diversity to know that the infrastructure tying the games together has all of the functionality required to support a broad range of such games, and offering enough diversity to answer targeted research questions. Research focuses on identifying the challenges in creating a broad and diverse public gaming community that interacts with more formal and established scientific and educational cultures, how learning occurs in such an environment and how to promote sustained engagement and deep learning, identifying core features and mechanisms of games that promote sustained engagement and science learning, and understanding the design features in the particular games being studied that contribute to sustained engagement and learning.There is an increasing awareness among scientists that many contemporary science problems require (or could benefit tremendously from) an actively engaged public. Communicating the challenges and opportunities of science, and mobilizing the public to participate in and support scientific inquiry, requires shared understandings about the values, methods, and epistemologies of science (e.g., observation, data collection and analysis, reasoning from evidence, skepticism). This project focuses on design of learning opportunities that are both engaging and informative with respect to scientific literacy. The public is invited to participate in a variety of science-related "games," experiences with scientific inquiry that are engaging and exciting and that can contribute to scientific findings. Participants engage as scientists, carrying out the practices of scientists and reasoning about evidence to draw conclusions, in the process experiencing the thrills and frustrations involved in scientific discovery and inquiry. Investigators observe the participants in these games to draw out principles for designing additional learning experiences that can engage the public in science and promote scientific literacy and learning at the same time. What is learned in this analysis will also be applicable to designing engaging science experiences for use in schools.