CI-TEAM Demo: Collaborative Games for Bioinformatics Education

该示范项目将利用最近对在线协作和多人游戏开发的社会情感机制的研究，以及BuddyPress现有的社交网络结构，创建一款针对初高中学生的新型教育游戏，该游戏结合了生物信息学和网络基础设施（CI）概念。在美国，对STEM和CI领域的兴趣和参与度正在下降，尤其是在代表性不足的少数民族和女性方面。研究表明，对STEM领域的兴趣丧失通常早在中学就发生了，此外，对这些领域的兴趣必须尽早产生，这样它们的吸引力才能继续进入本科及以后的阶段。考虑到目前K-12的资金限制，教师很难花一对一的时间来鼓励学生学习网络技术和解决问题。近年来，许多带有社交网络元素的教育类游戏吸引了不同规模的用户。然而，其中很少有专门设计用于教授CI概念的。此外，我们还不清楚是什么让一款教育类游戏引人注目，也不清楚社交网络游戏必须设计哪些元素才能让它传播得更广、寿命更长。情感或情感在计算和游戏技术中的作用直到最近才成为人们关注的焦点。最近的研究表明，人们玩游戏是因为它们能刺激自己的情绪。研究人员已经确定了游戏诱发情绪的关键领域，并指定了设计游戏机制的具体方法来唤起这些情绪。这种方法是新颖的，不仅因为它将教授生物信息学和CI，而且因为它专注于在多人游戏环境中激发情感。pi将利用这些情绪来加强同伴间的学习，并分析玩家体验的结果。这项工作将由PI另行通知吗？s以前对儿童之间在线合作的社会情感方面和科学合作的CI的研究。此外，研究团队还将利用BuddyPress （buddypress.org）的现有社交网络结构，这是一个下载次数超过39.2万次的开源社交网络平台，以促进游戏开发。通过将合作、积极情绪和社交网络与游戏的教育成分联系起来，该团队将向学生展示网络问题解决可以是有趣和引人入胜的。他们将让更多的年轻人接触到CI概念，并在年轻人定义自我认同的关键年龄对STEM职业产生更大的兴趣。知识价值。该项目将为教育社交网络游戏开发以及eScience和CI的教育组件的研究做出新的实证和概念贡献。从经验上看，这个项目将帮助我们理解年轻人如何使用和采用协作教育游戏，他们如何在主题中融入情感，以及如何设计这样的游戏来支持多种目的。从概念上讲，这个项目建立在PI之前关于构建科学CI和研究在线协作的情感维度的研究之上。这将为理解如何利用情感来开发非传统的CI教育手段创造一个框架。更广泛的影响。这款游戏不仅将利用社交网络让更多的年轻人接触到CI和生物信息学问题的解决，并直接激励学生对CI/生物信息学的职业感兴趣，而且还将为支持CI学习的未来教育游戏的发展提供信息、支持和刺激。通过深入了解是什么让一款游戏流行起来，并将这种理解应用到社交网络CI教育游戏中，该项目将为如何吸引更广泛的年轻学生社区参与STEM领域提供独特而及时的见解。为了增加代表性不足的少数民族和妇女对该项目的参与，该小组正在利用西北生物医学研究协会（NWABR）的服务，专门向代表性不足群体的教师和学生提供外联服务。这项研究对社会的长期好处包括，特别是在未被充分代表的年轻少数民族和女性中，对网络问题解决概念的吸收，以及概念模型的产生，这些模型将更好地理解人、教育游戏和基础设施计算技术之间更广泛的关系。

Collaborative Games for Bioinformatics Education This Demonstration Project will leverage recent research into the socio-emotional mechanics of online collaboration and multi-player game development, and the existing social networking structure of BuddyPress, to create a novel educational game that incorporates bioinformatics and cyberinfrastructure (CI) concepts aimed at middle school and early high school students. Interest in and participation in STEM fields and CI in the US is declining, specifically with regard to underrepresented minorities and women. It has been shown that the loss of interest in STEM fields often occurs as early as middle school, and additionally, that interest in such fields must be generated early for their appeal to continue into the undergraduate level and beyond. Given current K-12 funding constraints, it can be difficult for teachers to spend one-on-one time with students to encourage them to learn about cyber-technology and problem solving. Many educational games have been developed in recent years with a social networking component that have reached audiences of varying sizes. However, few of these have been designed specifically to teach CI concepts. Further, it is not yet clearly understood exactly what makes an educational game compelling, nor what elements must be designed into a social networking game to enable it to spread widely and have a long lifetime. The role of affect or emotion in computing and in game technology is only recently coming to the forefront. Recent studies have demonstrated that people play games because of the way they stimulate their emotions. Researchers have identified key areas of game-induced emotions and specified means to design game mechanics to evoke each of these emotions. This approach is novel not only because it will teach bioinformatics and CI, but because it focuses on eliciting emotions in a multi-player environment. The PIs will utilize these emotions to enhance peer-to-peer learning, and analyze the outcomes of the player experience. This work will be additionally informed by the PI?s previous research into the socio-emotional aspects of online collaboration among children and in CI for scientific collaborations. Further, the research team will leverage the existing social networking structure of BuddyPress (buddypress.org), an open source social networking platform that has been downloaded over 392,000 times, to facilitate game development. By linking collaboration, positive emotions, and social networking to the educational component of the game, the team will show students that cyber problem solving can be fun and engaging. They will expose more young people to CI concepts and generate more interest in STEM careers at a critical age where young people are defining their self-identity. Intellectual Merit. This project will make novel empirical and conceptual contributions to research in educational social networking game development and the educational component of eScience and CI. Empirically this project will provide an understanding of how young people use and adopt collaborative educational games, how they become emotionally involved in the subject matter, and how to design such games to support multiple purposes. Conceptually this project builds on the PI's previous research on architecting scientific CI and researching the emotional dimensions of online collaboration. This will create a framework for understanding how emotions can be leveraged to develop non-traditional means of CI education. Broader Impacts. The game will not only leverage social networking to expose larger numbers of young people to CI and bioinformatics problem solving and directly motivate students to become interested in CI/bioinformatics careers, but it will also inform, support, and stimulate the development of future educational games to support CI learning. By developing a deeper understanding of what makes a game popular, and by the application of this understanding to a social networking CI educational game, this project will provide unique and timely insights into how to engage a broader community of young students in STEM fields. To increase the participation of underrepresented minorities and women in the project, the team is leveraging the services of the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) to provide outreach specifically to teachers and students in underrepresented groups. The long-term benefits of this research to society include the uptake of concepts of cyber problem solving specifically among young underrepresented minorities and women, and the production of conceptual models that will give better understanding of the larger relationships between people, educational games, and infrastructural computational technologies more generally.