SBIR Phase I: College Bound Video Game

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛/商业影响将来自一款名为College Bound的有用游戏的制作，该游戏将吸引年轻人利用游戏时间学习如何驾驭大学准备、大学招生和经济援助过程。这种援助有助于解决为大量少数民族人口服务的高中辅导员人数不足的问题。研究表明，服务不足的高中生每年看辅导员的时间不到20分钟。众所周知，8-18岁的年轻人每天花7.5个小时与媒体接触--无论是玩电子游戏还是看电视--一个游戏平台可能会让占全国四年制大学本科生不到4%的少数民族学生为上大学做准备。The College Bound游戏旨在收回部分屏幕时间，以获得积极的好处，如改善少数族裔学生接受高等教育的准备，以及满足未来科学、技术、工程、数学和医学(STEMM)的劳动力需求。这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目专注于帮助未被充分代表的学生学习如何才能获得大学入学，如何准备，以及使用游戏环境提供哪些经济援助来支付教育费用。该项目将重点衡量学生对大学申请过程的知识，因为玩家在游戏的不同级别导航。关于大学申请过程的知识包括a)关于录取标准和截止日期的信息，b)大学录取和入学过程，以及c)通过奖学金、贷款、工作计划和/或个人储蓄支付大学费用的能力。在整个试点阶段，该项目将开发可靠和有效的评估工具，以衡量学生在大学游戏的每个级别的游戏设置中的学习情况。这些评估工具可能不仅反映学生的学习表现，还可能提高大学招生结果。这些措施还可能使学校和其他利益相关者了解学生的差距，并帮助加强学生进入大学的途径。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impacts of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will result from the production of a useful game, called College Bound, that will entice youth to use their gaming time to learn how to navigate the college preparation, college-admissions, and financial-aid processes. This assistance could help in addressing the problem of an inadequate number of counselors in high schools that serve large minority populations. Studies have shown that underserved high school students see a counselor for less than 20 minutes a year. Since is also known that young people between the ages of 8-18 spend 7.5 hours a day engaged with media- either playing video games or watching television a game platform may enable minority students, who make up less than 4% of undergraduate enrollees in the national four-year colleges, to prepare for college attendence. The College Bound game seeks to recoup some of this screen time for positive benefits such as improving preparedness of the minority students to access higher education, and meeting future workforce demands in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM).This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on assisting underrepresented students in learning about what it takes to get college admission, how to prepare for it, and what financial aid is available to afford the education using a gaming environment. The project will focus on measuring students' knowledge about the college application process as the player navigates through different levels of the game. Knowledge about the college application process includes a) information about admission criteria and deadlines, b) the college acceptance and enrollment processes, and c) the ability to pay for college through scholarships, loans, work programs, and/or personal savings. Throughout the pilot phase, the project will develop reliable and valid evaluation tools to measure student learning in the game setting at each level of the College Bound game. These evaluation tools might reflect not only student learning performance but also boost college enrollment outcomes. These measures may also enable the school and other stakeholders to understand students' gaps and help strengthen students’ pathways into college.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.