SBIR Phase I: A Virtual-World Game for Augmenting the Classroom with Interdisciplinary, Collaborative STEM Learning

该项目将开发一个沉浸式和动态的多人游戏，以满足迫切需要提供引人入胜的技术，使学生能够将协作，跨学科的科学实践应用于全球社会挑战。在一个与他们的真实的生活同龄人的增强教室里，学生们必须在火星上建立一个殖民地，这个殖民地能够养活成千上万来自地球的难民。为了成功实现他们的目标，学生必须使用在火星上发现的原材料来生产生命支持和建筑所需的组件，如食物，水，氧气和燃料。在这个模拟与他们的真实的课堂一起运行的几周内，学生将应用跨学科的STEM知识和实践来体验个人和集体行动如何产生短期和长期影响。游戏和配套课程将涉及下一代科学标准的内容，并最终帮助青少年了解科学与工程相结合的必要性，以解决清洁能源的生产，疾病的识别和治疗，充足的食物和水的分配以及全球环境变化等关键问题（NRC，2011）。创建教育游戏，更密切地反映他们的AAA同行提供了一个机会，吸引不同性别和代表性不足的青年到STEM相关领域。“的目标是创建“虚拟实地考察”，增强课堂并与之同步运行，在高度参与的社会环境中提供应用程序和体验式学习。它将建立在以前的专有技术基础上，该技术可以实现同步在线交互，复杂的分布式模拟以及共享虚拟世界中的数据收集。这使得该项目在初始阶段不仅可以专注于为学生开发高质量的游戏，还可以设计和测试高风险的课堂整合方法。这个游戏包括教师，并建议改变叙事弧线的行动，为学生提供关键知识，或增加或限制学生可用的其他物质资源。教师将能够利用收集到的学生游戏数据，将小型、动态的学生分组与高影响力的迷你课程配对，从而使该项目能够积极支持教师实施个性化、数据驱动的教学。通过包括一个教师友好的评估工具包，该项目可以在地区的当前要求范围内运作，同时在课堂上试验教育游戏的未来。第一阶段的研究将集中在可用性和对学生学习的影响，以及试图了解教师愿意接受和使用教师支持功能。

This project will develop an immersive and dynamic multi-player game that addresses a pressing need to provide engaging technologies that prepare students to apply collaborative, cross-disciplinary scientific practices to global societal challenges. In an augmented classroom with their real life peers, students must establish a colony on Mars that is capable of sustaining thousands of refugees from Earth. To successfully achieve their goal, students must use raw materials found on Mars to produce components necessary for life support and building, such as food, water, oxygen, and fuel. In the weeks that this simulation runs alongside their real classroom, students will apply cross-disciplinary STEM knowledge and practices to experience how both individual and collective actions have short- and long-term effects. The game and supporting curriculum will address content from the Next Generation Science Standards and ultimately help adolescent youth understand the need for the integration of science and engineering to tackle critical issues such as the production of clean energy, identification and treatment of disease, the allocation of adequate food and water, and global environmental change (NRC, 2011). Creating educational games that more closely mirror their AAA counterparts provides an opportunity to draw diverse genders and underrepresented youth into STEM-related fields.This project?' goal is to create "virtual field trips" that augment a classroom and run simultaneous to it, providing applications and experiential learning in a highly engaging social environment. It will build upon previous proprietary technology that enables simultaneous online interactions, complex distributed simulations, and data gathering in shared virtual worlds. This allows the project in its initial phase to focus not only on developing a quality game for students but also on designing and testing high-risk approaches to classroom integration. This game includes the teacher and suggests actions that alter narrative arcs, provide students with key knowledge, or increase or constrain other material resources students have available. Teachers will be able to leverage data collected on student game play to pair small, dynamic groupings of students with high impact mini-lessons to allow the project to actively support teachers as they implement personalized, data-driven instruction. By including a teacher-friendly assessment toolkit, the project can operate within districts' current requirements while experimenting with the future of educational gaming in the classroom. Phase I research will focus on usability and impact on student learning, as well as attempt to understand how willing teachers are to accept and use the teacher support features.