Collaborative Research: Developing a Framework to better engage students in STEM via Game Design

亚利桑那州立大学和匹兹堡大学将实施一个名为“开发一个框架，通过游戏设计更好地让学生参与STEM”的项目，重点是通过土木工程和建筑课程的游戏设计方法进行积极学习。该框架不仅是模块化和可扩展的，适合各种内容领域，而且还将作为一种评估学生学习的方法，对课堂使用的障碍最小。它将为STEM教师提供一种在课堂上实施主动学习的相对容易的方式，该项目将要求学生将课程内容应用于他们自己的游戏设计，进而展示他们对课程内容的掌握，而不是通过游戏进行教学。为了做到这一点，研究人员将使用三种方法来实现游戏设计，并在课程内和课程之间比较这些方法。这些方法包括：(1)要求学生重新设计经典棋类游戏以反映课程内容，(2)修改现有的教育游戏以更好地反映课程内容，以及(3)创建具有学生发展的学习目标的新游戏。主题将包括但不限于挖掘和基础、结构系统、工业生态、能源使用、排放、资源稀缺以及环境政策的影响和与资源消耗有关的因素。所有这些话题都对公共安全、健康和福利产生了重大影响。其他更广泛的影响将通过促进游戏设计框架及其对学生学习和保持的影响，出版和营销学生创建的游戏作为教育资源，供各机构的教职员工轻松采用，并通过在K-12外展工作中分享游戏，从而提高对土木工程和建筑的兴趣。游戏和基于游戏的学习已被许多教室用作一种积极的学习策略。它们是有充分证据的方法，通过课程材料吸引和激励学生，以改善学生的学习结果。研究人员发现，在玩游戏和游戏设计之后，很容易将学生从单纯的理解提升到布鲁姆分类的认知维度，从理解到反思、创造和评估。他们将致力于发现这一框架的实施是否促进了学生的参与度、社区意识、元认知和对STEM的保留。要研究的问题是：(1)作为一种课程工具，游戏设计是否支持学生的参与，增强社区意识，改善元认知，并增加留在工程学的意向？(2)这种方法的原则和特点是什么，使其在特定的学生水平或项目中取得成功？(3)对于广泛的可转换性和可扩展性，有哪些有效的实践？利用形成性评估的结果，如观察、调查、学生作业评估等，调查人员将不断完善构成其框架的三种方法，以记录和传播成功的做法，向土木工程和建筑方面的其他教师提供具有变革性的课程材料。

Arizona State University and the University of Pittsburgh will implement a project entitled "Developing a Framework to better engage students in STEM via Game Design," focused on active learning through game design approaches for civil engineering and construction courses. The framework will be not only modular and scalable, fitting into a variety of content areas, but will also serve as a method of assessing student learning with minimal barriers to classroom use. It will offer STEM instructors a relatively easy way to implement active learning in the classroom, and rather than teaching through game play, the project will require students to apply course content to the design of their own games, in turn illustrating their mastery of course content. To do this, the investigators will employ three approaches for game design implementation, and compare these approaches within and across courses. The approaches include: (1) asking students to re-purpose classic board games to reflect course content, (2) modifying existing educational games to better reflect course content, and (3) creating a new game with student-developed learning objectives. Topics will include, but are not limited to, excavations and foundations, structural systems, industrial ecology, energy use, emissions, resource scarcity, and implications of environmental policies and factors related to resource consumption. All of these topics have significant implications for public safety, health and welfare. Additional broader impacts will be achieved through promoting the game design framework and its effects on student learning and retention, publishing and marketing student-created games as education resources that are easily adoptable by faculty at various institutions, and by sharing the games in K-12 outreach efforts, thereby promoting interest in civil engineering and construction.Games and game-based learning have been used in many classrooms as an active learning strategy. They are well-documented methods to engage and motivate students through course material in order to improve student learning outcomes. The investigators have found that following game play with game design easily moves students up the cognitive dimensions of Bloom's taxonomy, from merely understanding to reflection, creation, and evaluation. They will aim to discover if implementation of this framework promotes increased student engagement, sense of community, metacognition, and retention in STEM. The research questions to be studied are: (1) As a curricular tool, does game design support student engagement, strengthen a sense of community, improve metacognition, and increase intention to remain in engineering? (2) What are the principles and characteristics of this approach that make it successful for a given student level or program? (3) What are effective practices for widespread transferability and scalability? Using the outcomes of formative assessments such as observations, surveys, evaluations of student work, etc., investigators will continuously refine the three approaches that make up their framework to document and disseminate successful practices, providing transformative curricular materials to other instructors in civil engineering and construction.