Drug Scene Investigators

描述(申请人提供)：“毒品现场调查员”的目标是通过使用一个解决问题的游戏来教育中学生滥用毒品的生物学知识，在这个游戏中，学生在模拟现实生活的情况下进行研究。这个游戏涉及一个多学科的方法，旨在让不同的学习者群体能够理解材料。IT合作伙伴建立了许多团体使用的方法和理论--这些方法被证明在教育年轻人方面是有效的--但很少在人口结构不同的受众广泛可用的媒介中一起使用。它们是：合作学习、识字脚手架、反馈学习和体验语言。我们建议：1)为“毒品现场调查员”创建用户界面，这是一种高度互动的、以识字为基础的多阅读水平的游戏，用于通过反馈学习、案例演示和合作学习向中学生传授滥用毒品的神经科学和生物学知识；2)为以经验语言讲述的“毒品现场调查员”创建案例历史，说明发生在广泛吸毒者群体中的情况；并为“毒品现场调查员”开发涵盖NIDA网站上每个主要毒品课程的毒品信息页面；3)在课堂上实施“毒品现场调查员”游戏，4)利用中学课堂上的学生和教师进行反馈，评估利用毒品现场调查员提高对滥用毒品的认识的可行性。我们的假设是，合作学习、识字支架、反馈学习和经验语言的原则可以结合在一个基于计算机的激励性游戏的背景下，以一种培养批判性思维的方式帮助提高学生对药物滥用的理解，并缩小少数族裔或经济困难学生经常看到的成绩差距。学生将通过学习案例、观看场景、做实验、检查实验室数据、记录有用信息、阅读药物信息页面，并根据这些信息来决定指定的药物是否与案件有关，从而与这款游戏互动。结果将在26所学校和3900名中学生中进行评估。我们希望该项目将有助于改善我们年轻人的教育，不仅是在增进对药物滥用科学的理解方面，而且在生命科学的其他领域也是如此。我们建议建立的网络学习模式可以广泛地向学校和公众提供，并成为加强对药物滥用的了解的重要工具。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of "Drug Scene Investigators" is to educate middle school students about the biology of drugs of abuse through the use of a problem-solving game in which students carry out research in a simulated real-life situation. This game involves a multidisciplinary approach that is designed to make material comprehensible to a diverse group of learners. It partners established methods and theories used by many groups-methods shown to be effective in educating young people-but rarely employed together in a widely-available medium for a demographically diverse audience. These are: Cooperative Learning, Literacy Scaffolding, Feedback Learning, and Language of Experience. We propose to: 1) create the user interface for "Drug Scene Investigators", a highly interactive, literacy-scaffolded, multiple reading level game for teaching middle school students about the neuroscience and biology of the drugs of abuse through Feedback learning, case-presentation and cooperative learning, 2) create case histories for "Drug Scene Investigators" told in the language of experience that illustrate situations befalling a wide demographic of individual drug users, and develop drug information pages for "Drug Scene Investigators" that cover each of the major drug classes on the NIDA website, 3) implement the "Drug Scene Investigators" game for use in classrooms, and 4) use students and teachers in middle school classrooms to obtain feedback and evaluate the feasibility of using "Drug Scene Investigators" to improve understanding of drugs of abuse. Our hypothesis is that the principles of cooperative learning, literacy scaffolding, feedback learning, and the language of experience can be combined in the context of a motivational, computer-based game to help improve student understanding of drug abuse in a way that fosters critical thinking and reduces the achievement gap often seen with minority or economically disadvantaged students. Students will interact with this game by studying a case, viewing a scene, doing experiments, examining lab data, recording useful information, reading drug information pages, and, based on the information, deciding if an assigned drug is involved with the case. Outcomes will be evaluated in 26 schools and 3900 middle school students. We expect the project will contribute to improving the education of our youth, not only with respect to improved comprehension of drug abuse sciences, but to other areas of life science. What we propose to create can become a model for web-based learning that can be made widely available to schools and the general public and become an important tool for enhancing understanding of drug abuse.