Purpose: In the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress only 17% of 8th grade students performed at or above the proficient level in U.S. history. One way to engage students in learning history is to create history learning resources that are designed to be relevant and appealing to young people's interests and regular activities. Surveys find that almost all teenage boys and girls play digital games, and the majority of teens play daily. This project will leverage the potential of games and technology to engage students and increase history skills and content knowledge.
Project Activities: The team, consisting of graphic artists, content specialists, computer scientists, and programmers, will initially create wireframes and a functional game prototype. Following feedback from a group of students and teachers on the user-interface, the team will produce an online tablet app. Iterative refinements will be conducted at major production milestones until the intervention is fully functional. Once development is complete, the researchers will assess the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the product to improve outcomes in a pilot study. The study will include 200 8th grade students in eight classrooms. Four classrooms will be assigned to play to game as part of the curriculum over three to five class periods, and four classrooms will be taught the same historical content using the business as usual curriculum without the game. Each group will complete pre- and post- assessments to assess differences in history knowledge and skills.
Product: This project team will develop a tablet-based interactive role-playing game that immerses 5th through 9th grade students in the history of the Great Depression. The game will provide players an experiential understanding of the hardships that beset Americans in the 1930s and their strategies for survival, as individuals and as a nation. Features of the game will include story-based immersive narrative missions where student's decisions continually drive the action, tips and hints for students who are struggling in the game, writing tools, and interactive maps. The game will can be integrated within a course or used as a supplement. A teacher dashboard will be developed to facilitate the use of the game within classroom settings. Finally, the final product will include upgrades to existing games, including City of Immigrants and the The Hardest Times. The upgrades will publish these games to tablets and will include deeper in-game assessment opportunities.
Purpose: There is concern about a decline in mathematics achievement scores among U.S. students during the middle school years. For example, while 4th grade U.S. students rank 8th overall on an international mathematics comparison, by 10th grade U.S. student's drop significantly to 25th in the same comparison. Some researchers posit that much of this decline relates to how math is taught in the U.S. and with how students become less engaged as learners in middle school. The purpose of this project is to develop a web-based game to engage 7h grade students in a narrative-based story which will apply learning of content and skills aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics.
Project Activities: During Phase I in 2012, the team developed a functioning prototype and conducted usability and feasibility research with fourteen 7th grade students. Researchers found that the prototype functioned as intended and that students were highly engaged while playing the game. In Phase II, the team will develop a fully-functional user interface with animated characters, interactivity across student users, narrative scripts and accompanying art assets, 36 problem sets, and student and teacher dashboards and databases. After development is complete, a pilot study will examine the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the game to improve math learning. The study will include 120 students in 6 classrooms in three schools, with one classroom per school randomly assigned to use the game and the other half assigned to a business-as-usual control. Analyses will compare student scores on pre and post mathematics measures.
Product: Empires is a web-based game that addresses 36 pre-algebra Common Core State Standards in mathematics for 7th and 8th grades. The game follows a storyline in a recreation of an ancient empire which is at the brink of agricultural revolution and of becoming a trade economy. As students play the game, they engage in math-focused activities to drive the action, such as taxing citizens to learn ratios and proportions, allocating resources to learn percentages, and measuring the distance and time between a neighboring empire by applying the principles of the Pythagorean Theorem. As a socially networked game, students will interact with other students in the class to complete trades that lead to encounters with different math problems. The game will include two helpful, funny, advisors who will scaffold learning through mathematical discourse, arguing over the next most important thing to do. The game design architecture will work on a wide range of computers, including desktops and iPads. A teacher's guide and companion website will provide guidance to classroom activities that complement the game.
Children’s issues have become a greater priority on political agendas since the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Each government has agreed to ensure that all those working with and for children understand their duties in relation to upholding children’s rights including the obligation to involve children in decisions that affect them (Article 12). Respecting children’s views is not just a model of good pedagogical practice, but a legally binding obligation. However, there is a limited awareness of Article 12, and how to actualise it. While many
The Flathead Community of Resource Educators (CORE) is a consortium of educators in the Flathead Watershed. They produced the Flathead Watershed Sourcebook as a tool to increase understanding and appreciation of the region. The objective of this project is to produce a curriculum guide to accompany the Sourcebook. This curriculum project will be carried out by a team of experts in interdisciplinary teacher education from Montana State University. The project will be conducted in four phases and include the guidance and feedback of Scientists, Educators, and Resource Managers living and working within the Flathead watershed.
This study examines how youth navigate socioscientific issues through the case studies of two students in an afterschool program. The study explores how the students’ thinking changed during the program and what influenced the students’ final stance on whether or not to build a new hybrid power plant in their community.
Future Space is an educational but fun pair of planetarium programs, targeted at middle school students and then general public, to show that NASA is still in the space business! The lead institution is the Louisiana Art and Science Museum with lead production at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and science and program review through Rice University. The program has produced one excellent planetarium show "We Choose Space!" which covers the history of the space program including building the International Space Station (ISS), and actual images from our fisheye lens inside the ISS. It has been licensed to over a dozen theaters around the world and is also available for free viewing through YouTube, with a free downloadable Educator Guide. It has been translated into Spanish, Hindi, and Teluga and is being translated into Turkish. A second show "The Gravity Factor", which discusses how humans might in the future visit and exploit the planets, is being completed now. It uses surface gravity as a common theme. A dome cover was created to represent the ISS Cupola from the outside.
This two-year project is communicating the results of scientific discoveries produced by an on-going LTER (Long-term Ecological Research) project devoted to understanding the Everglades ecosystem. Specifically, Dr. Heithaus is capitalizing on the discoveries funded through 0620409 (Coastal Oligotrophic Ecosystems Research) about the role of large-bodied, top predators in the Everglades, including bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) and American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). The STEM content of this project is biology, in particular ecology, the environment, and conservation. These results are being communicated via: (1) multimedia exhibit presentations at multiple museums and nature centers in southern Florida, primarily the Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS), located in Ft. Lauderdale near the Everglades and (2) online dissemination of mini-documentaries and other educational components at social media websites and the LTER web site. The target audience for the museum exhibit components includes learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, such as urban family groups reflecting the demographics of southern Florida. This project will also develop a documentary about Everglades ecology that is planned for dissemination on a cable TV channel devoted to natural history. In order to link with formal education, related educational deliverables are being produced for use in science classroom settings (grades 4 through 12) that are aligned with the state science standards and benchmarks. Formative assessment conducted by museum staff and university students will evaluate learning outcomes as they relate to STEM content learning goals. After the two-year funding period, the science learning opportunities produced from the current Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project will be sustained as the exhibit travels to other venues and as web deliverables are accessed on-line.
The Louisiana State Museum and Tulane University/Xavier University Center for Bioenvironmental Research and the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, along with several other research collaborators, designers, evaluators, and the Times-Picayune newspaper are partnering to develop a multi-pronged approach on educating the general public, school children, teachers and public officials on the STEM-related aspects of Hurricane Katrina and its implications for the future of New Orleans and other parts of the country. The major products will be an 8,500 square-foot semi-permanent exhibit, smaller exhibits for Louisiana regional libraries, a comprehensive Web site on hurricanes, a set of studies on informal learning, a case study for public officials about the relevance of science research to policy and planning, teacher workshops, and a workshop for interested exhibit designers from around the country. This project advances the field of informal science education by exploring how museums, universities, and their communities can work together to provide meaningful learning experiences on STEM topics that are critical to solving important community and national issues.
The Pueblo of Santa Clara's Community Library will continue its important role as a community anchor in fostering 21st-century learning and information use with a range of interactive projects that will engage community members of all ages. Technology Access Nights will foster responsible technology use and awareness among young learners and their families, especially promoting safe social media practices. For hands-on technology learning, youth, elders, and their families will collaborate on two oral history projects. One will gather stories of Santa Clara Pueblo women's achievements and cultural endurance, and the other will document strategies for academic success. Also, a youth mentor/internship initiative will create a cadre of "Bookworm Interns" trained in the Every Child Ready to Read Program®, allowing the interns to practice their new skills during the Summer Reading Program, which will be extended from one to five weeks.