Drug Scene Investigators

描述（由申请人提供）：“毒品现场调查员”的目的是通过使用解决问题的游戏，让学生在模拟现实生活的情况下进行研究，教育中学生滥用毒品的生物学。这个游戏涉及一个多学科的方法，旨在使材料理解不同群体的学习者。它与许多团体使用的方法和理论合作，这些方法在教育年轻人方面被证明是有效的，但很少在人口统计学上不同的受众中广泛使用。这些是：合作学习，识字支架，反馈学习和经验的语言。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、以识字为支架的、多阅读水平的游戏，通过反馈学习、案例展示和合作学习，向中学生讲授滥用毒品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，说明了发生在广大吸毒者身上的情况，并为“毒品现场调查员”开发毒品信息页面，涵盖NIDA网站上的每一个主要毒品类别，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获得反馈，并评估使用“毒品现场调查员”提高对滥用毒品的理解的可行性。我们的假设是，合作学习，识字脚手架，反馈学习和经验的语言的原则可以结合在一个动机，基于计算机的游戏，以帮助提高学生对药物滥用的理解的方式，培养批判性思维，减少成绩差距经常看到少数民族或经济上处于不利地位的学生。学生将通过研究案例，查看场景，做实验，检查实验室数据，记录有用的信息，阅读药物信息页面，并根据信息，决定是否分配药物与案件有关，与这个游戏进行互动。结果将在26所学校和3900名中学生中进行评估。我们期望该项目将有助于改进对我国青年的教育，不仅在提高对药物滥用科学的理解方面，而且在生命科学的其他领域。我们所建议的做法可以成为一种网上学习的模式，可以广泛提供给学校和公众，并成为提高对药物滥用的认识的一个重要工具。

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.