Interactive Fiction story to teach college readiness executive functioning skills to college-bound students with ASD and ADHD

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Project Summary: (30 lines) CTS – College Transition Stories This Phase I SBIR project will determine the feasibility of using an Accessible Interactive Fiction (AIF) story to help students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 16 to 21 years old, who are college-bound (CBASD), to improve their ability to succeed in a college environment. Research has shown that practicing college readiness skills leads to improve college enrollment and graduation outcomes for CBASD students. However, due to the severe shortage of counselors to work with these students, these students become unnecessarily at risk for failing at college. We will build an AIF story game, College Transition Stories (CTS), that will enable a CBASD student to practice and improve their college readiness skills. CTS will ameliorate the counselor shortage by enabling: (1) the student to independently practice college readiness skills between sessions with the counselor, (2) the student to learn in a virtual non-threatening, safe environment, as they experience the outcomes of their college readiness skill decisions, and (3) the counselor to review the student’s college readiness skills decisions and adjust instruction to address any areas where additional instruction is needed. This Phase I project will answer the Specific Question: “To what extent do CBASD students find an AIF story game to be a usable and engaging system to practice College Readiness skills?”. This question will be answered through three Specific Aims (SA). In SA-1, we define the requirements for the AIF story game. In SA-2, we create the AIF story game. In SA-3, we assess the AIF story game’s usability and engagement by recruiting 20 CBASD students to use the AIF story game and then measure the student’s rating of the story’s usability and engagement. Improving college readiness skills for CBASD students aligns with the 2021 NIGMS mission: To enhance the diversity of the scientific workforce. And Encouraging Diversity in Biomedical Research, including people with disabilities, is one of the Cross-Cutting NIGMS Themes.