SBIR Phase I: Online Platform to Host Intra-District, Game-Based Math Competition

非技术性段落：这个SBIR第一阶段项目提供了一个开发和测试教育平台的机会，该平台旨在提高学生在STEM学科，特别是数学方面的动机水平。拟议平台的核心活动包括现场学术竞赛，学生在基于游戏的在线舞台上回答问题。从本质上讲，该平台将借鉴流行的体育运动中的功能和结构，从积分、记分牌和排名到联赛、锦标赛和锦标赛，并在网上复制它们，以便学生可以在课堂上进行学术竞争，就像他们在运动场上竞争一样，预计随后将获得类似的表现收益和同行动态的改善。该平台利用令人兴奋的在线形式的经典游戏机制，有可能激励线下学术竞争历来失败的技能和人口统计领域的学生。在过去改善学习结果和缩小成绩差距的努力中，美国一直专注于投入，例如班级规模、书本数量等，最近则侧重于输出，例如标准化考试成绩。这个项目提供了一个从一个新的角度或视角来探讨学习进步的机会。通过直接关注学生的动机，以及最近互联网时代的到来才使其成为可能的结构，该项目利用竞争的力量，努力推进NSF在美国技术段落中所述的培养具有全球竞争力的STEM劳动力和提高经济竞争力的使命：该项目需要开发一个网络和移动平台，能够托管和吸引美国各地的每一名学生参与强劲的在线竞争活动。因此，拟议的活动在广度和范围上是广泛的，因此从技术和设计的角度来说都是一个巨大的挑战。在美国，绝大多数学生是在学区环境中接受教育的。因此，平台的设计必须完全符合学区计划、流程和结构的参数。它的设计必须是全面的，无缝地融合了非常不同用户的体验。设想了三个不同的角色：平台的管理员将有能力为整个校区/网络的学生创建基于团队和基于个人的联盟、锦标赛和锦标赛；平台上的教师将能够通过将学生团队/班级分成多个相互竞争的团队或向同一校区/网络中的另一支球队发起挑战来为他们安排比赛；平台上的学生将能够与同一校区/网络中的其他学生安排基于个人的比赛，或者与个人最佳化身进行比赛。将所有这些活动整合到一个平台中，这个平台可以与现有的在线教育平台集成，并在全美的各个学区之间复制，这符合美国国家科学基金会S支持高技术风险项目的目标。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nontechnical paragraph:This SBIR Phase I project presents an opportunity to develop and test an educational platform designed to improve motivation levels in students with respect to the STEM disciplines, especially Mathematics. The core activity of the proposed platform consists of live academic competition, students answering questions in a game-based, online arena. The platform will, in essence, borrow the features and structures found in popular athletic sports, from points, scoreboards and rankings to leagues, tournaments and championships, and reproduce them online so that students can compete academically in the classroom just like they compete athletically on the sports field, with similar performance gains and improvements to peer dynamics expected to follow. Leveraging classic game mechanics in an exciting online format, the platform has the potential to motivate students across the skill and demographic spectrums where offline academic competitions have historically failed. In past attempts to improve learning outcomes and close the achievement gap, the U.S. has focused on inputs, e.g., class-size, book counts, etc., and more recently, outputs, e.g., standardized test scores. This project offers the chance to approach learning improvement from a new angle or perspective. By focusing directly on student motivation with a structure only recently made possible by the advent of the internet age, this project leverages the power of competition in an effort to advance the stated NSF missions of developing a globally competitive STEM workforce and increasing economic competitiveness in the U.S.Technical paragraph:This project entails the development of a web and mobile platform with the ability to host and engage every student across the U.S. in robust, online competition activity. As such, the proposed activity is expansive in its breadth and scope and therefore presents an immense challenge, both from a technical and a design perspective. In the U.S., the vast majority of students are educated in a school district setting. Therefore, the platform must be designed in such a way as to fit neatly within the parameters of school district scheduling, processes and structures. It must be comprehensive in its design, seamlessly blending together the experiences of very different users. Three distinct roles are imagined: an administrator of the platform will have the ability to create leagues, tournaments, and championships, team-based and individual-based, for students across the school district/network; a teacher on the platform will be able to arrange matches for a team/class of students by dividing them into multiple teams that play against each other or challenging another team in the same school district/network to a match; a student on the platform will be able to arrange individual-based matches with other students in the same school district/network or play against a personal best avatar. Bringing all such activity together into a single platform, one that can be integrated with existing online education platforms and replicated from school district to school district across the U.S., satisfies NSF?s objective of supporting projects of high technical risk.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.