Drug Scene Investigators

描述（由申请人提供）：“毒品现场调查员”的目的是通过使用一个解决问题的游戏来教育中学生滥用药物的生物学，在这个游戏中，学生们在模拟的现实生活中进行研究。这个游戏涉及一个多学科的方法，旨在使材料理解不同的学习者群体。它合作建立了许多团体使用的方法和理论，这些方法在教育年轻人方面被证明是有效的，但很少在一个广泛可用的媒体上为不同的受众使用。它们是：合作学习，识字脚手架，反馈学习和经验语言。我们建议：1)为“毒品现场调查员”创建用户界面，这是一个高度互动的、识字的、多重阅读水平的游戏，通过反馈学习、案例展示和合作学习，向中学生讲授滥用药物的神经科学和生物学；2)为“毒品现场调查员”创建案例历史，用经验的语言讲述，说明发生在广大个人吸毒者身上的情况；开发“毒品现场调查员”的毒品信息页面，覆盖NIDA网站上的每个主要毒品类别；3)实施“毒品现场调查员”游戏，在课堂上使用；4)在中学课堂上通过学生和教师获取反馈并评估使用“毒品现场调查员”的可行性，以提高对滥用药物的认识。我们的假设是，合作学习、识字脚手架、反馈学习和经验语言的原则可以在一个动机性的、基于电脑的游戏的背景下结合起来，以帮助提高学生对药物滥用的理解，从而培养批判性思维，减少少数民族或经济状况不佳的学生经常出现的成绩差距。学生将通过研究一个案例、观看一个场景、做实验、检查实验室数据、记录有用信息、阅读药物信息页面，并根据这些信息决定指定的药物是否与案例有关，来与这个游戏互动。将对26所学校和3900名中学生进行评价。我们期望该项目将有助于改进我国青年的教育，不仅在更好地理解药物滥用科学方面，而且在生命科学的其他领域。我们建议创建的东西可以成为一种基于网络的学习模式，可以广泛地提供给学校和公众，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.