SBIR Phase I: Race To Mars: Examining How to Interest and Engage Females in STEM through an Exploratory Examination of Serious Game Design Variables

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段致力于提高女性和少数民族学生对工程和相关领域的兴趣。接触STEM中代表性不足的人群对于发展21世纪世纪工程和STEM勘探和生产所需的国内劳动力至关重要。WisdomTools和Project Lead The Way（PLTW）提议设计、开发和测试“火星竞赛”，这是一个基于问题的严肃游戏，旨在吸引高中女生参与航空航天工程和与飞行和太空相关的STEM挑战。游戏内容包括一个游戏设计原则框架，以吸引代表性不足的群体，一个严肃的游戏模块，以及教师和学生指南。我们的假设是，通过确定新的方法来设计，开发和实施工程课程，使用具有游戏元素的严肃游戏，吸引代表性不足的群体，我们可以提高高中生（特别是女性和少数民族女性）对工程的兴趣，动机和学习成果。了解视频游戏是否以及如何支持对STEM的兴趣和动机，以及视频游戏是否以及如何支持学习具有挑战性的工程概念，将是重要的发现，可以告知和推进我们的国家？的STEM目标。 Race to Mars的可用性和可行性将通过前后测试、调查、访谈、观察和用户数据跟踪与不同的高中学生进行测试。数据将进行分析，以评估对感兴趣的人群的影响。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是该项目的潜力在于使用严肃的游戏作为一种创新的方式来建立和保持学生对STEM领域的兴趣，无论是在课堂上还是在家里。Race to Mars使用引人注目的视频游戏设计原则，旨在让年轻人参与并玩几个小时，并将其与性别和游戏，嵌入式支架，协作学习以及支持学生发展兴趣和学习复杂工程概念所需的可视化和模拟功能的广泛研究相结合。为了帮助扩大和多样化的国内工程师人才库，“火星竞赛”将旨在吸引女性，包括有色人种女性，进入工程领域。火星竞赛将在PTLW中分发？我们的3500所学校在所有50个州的网络，以及销售给学校有兴趣补充其他课程（科学，职业和技术教育）与真实的学习挑战，并有兴趣让他们的孩子接触到工程世界的挑战和机遇的家庭。“火星竞赛”将利用我们现有的STEM严肃游戏与其他国家和地区的合作伙伴，如美国宇航局？美国教育部和印第安纳州教育部。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I strives to increase female and minority student interest in engineering and related fields. Reaching underrepresented populations in STEM is essential for developing the domestic workforce needed for 21st century engineering and STEM exploration and production. WisdomTools and Project Lead The Way (PLTW) propose to design, develop and test Race to Mars, a problem-based serious game to interest and engage high school females in aerospace engineering and STEM challenges related to flight and space. Deliverables include a framework of game design principles to attract underrepresented groups, a serious game module, and teacher and student guides. Our hypothesis is that by identifying new ways to design, develop, and implement engineering curriculum using serious games with game elements that engage underrepresented groups, we can increase interest, motivation, and learning outcomes in engineering for high school students (particularly for females and minority females.) Understanding if and how video games can support interest and motivation in STEM and if and how video games can support learning challenging engineering concepts will be important discoveries that can inform and advance our nation?s STEM goals. Usability and feasibility of Race to Mars will be tested with diverse high school students using pre-posttests, surveys, interviews, observations, and user data tracking. Data will be analyzed to assess impact on populations of interest.The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential of this project lies in the use of serious games as an innovative way to build and retain student interest in STEM fields, both in the classroom and at home. Race to Mars uses compelling video game design principles that are designed to keep young people engaged and playing for hours and combines it with extensive research in gender and games, embedded scaffolds, collaborative learning, and visualization and simulation capabilities needed to support students in developing an interest in and learning complex engineering concepts. To help broaden and diversify the domestic pool of engineers, Race to Mars will be designed to attract females, including females of color, to engineering fields. Race to Mars will be distributed within PTLW?s network of 3500 schools in all 50 states as well as marketed to schools interested in supplementing other courses (science, career and technical education) with authentic learning challenges, and to families interested in exposing their children to the challenges and opportunities of the engineering world. Race to Mars will leverage our existing STEM serious games work with other national and regional partners such as NASA?s Office of Education and the Indiana Department of Education.