Alan - this is a great question and one we hope to explore in the next iteration of the study. Our intent is to continue to refine both the intervention and the spatial skill measurements to ensure validity and reliability, and then begin to look at the influence of the gameplay and spatial skill development on those longer term goals like greater STEM engagement for girls later in high school and beyond.

As a researcher and a parent, I'm also interested in how your project relates to the broader project of increasing girls' STEM engagement, especially in the middle and HS years.

Hi Kristin! We too are really looking forward to exploring those more broader impacts like STEM interest in MS and HS. I am a parent of a middle school female who is reluctant at times with certain STEM disciplines - so this is of great interest to me too on the personal level.

Thanks so much for the positive feedback. And our team couldn't agree more - the potential of Minecraft is super exciting! In reviewing past STEM For All video showcases, our team came across your 2018 submission focused on Minecraft as a tool to explore astronomy. It seems we have quite an intersection of research interests!

Fantastic set of questions. For this phase of the research, we have been using a standard pre-test post-test design to measure growth in spatial skills. But we also recently piloted collecting more qualitative data including gesturing and vocabulary use. And in our camp last summer, we explored possible transfer task assessments outside of game play using real-world manipulatives. These measurement approaches were promising and really exciting.

And lastly, your question about the alignment of Minecraft to our educational goals certainly resonated with me! We have largely been quite happy with the platform - it lends itself so well to spatial skill development. But we have found that it is resource-intensive. The time required to build the in-game "check system" to confirm if the students had correctly manipulated the objects within the spatial skills puzzles took enormous effort. And our current intervention structure requires many adults in the room with the kids facilitating their game play. We were lucky to have a great crew of innovative and enthusiastic preservice teachers and grad research assistants lending their help, but we recognize future efforts will require us to consider how to inject some efficiencies, streamline the intervention, and reduce the load on the teachers if we want this to be a truly feasible and practical formal or informal learning experience. 

Thanks again for the feedback and questions!

Designing these puzzles is very time consuming and requires the use of third-party ad-ons.  There is not a straight forward way of copying regions which the ad-ons verify and as a result we have been forced to have students work in groups.

The largest drawback to Minecraft is that students have too much fun in free-build so it is hard to get them to do the puzzles instead. 

I feel your pain

Thanks Lorna! I agree - I wish I had been able to play it in elementary school too!

We designed a series of puzzles and tasks in Minecraft that mimic typical assessment questions for certain visual spatial skills.  So far the focus has been on mental rotations and the ability to port information between two-dimensions and three-dimensions.  We found that the students preferred having the blocks to help with the puzzles.  Students were also provided several paper maps to help them navigate through mazes in-game  In order to assess learning growth we had students answer questions which were based on previously validated instruments.

I'll let Nick take your final question.

In response to your last question, Patrick: Although the research is conflicted and inconsistent, some working theories we have encountered that might explain the gender gap include differences in visuospatial short-term memory, as well as differences between males and females in the cognitive strategies used when solving spatial tasks. Others explanations include possible differences in biology, previous experience (boys might get more practice that girls with spatial skills through game play), the affective state of the individual, or even test administration condition differences between boys and girls. I'd be happy to pass along the references to this research if you are interested!

Thanks to you both for your answers. All very interesting!

Nice to hear some about your work as well.

We measured different forms of spatial intelligence in a pre/posttest fashion, so one test before the camp and a follow-up after; I don't think we can directly tie any change in those skills to a particular activity. But you raise a very interesting (and important) question, especially since one direction we've considered is breaking these activities down into smaller "bite-size" chunks that can be easily incorporated into a middle school classroom setting. Nick and/or Barrett may have more insight from an observational perspective as to which tasks might have been more effective, but I think what you are asking is important because it would help produce modules that a) would implement easy in a classroom setting and b) would effectively promote spatial intelligence.

And congrats on defending your dissertation Helen!

I concur on the inspiration thoughts. My middle school students are also inspired by Minecraft and are piloting using it for learning for the end of the year. They had the principal and curriculum director contacting me a day after I asked if they thought it could be a good end of year project. I plan to show them this project video. 

Thank you to both of you so much for you encouragement! 

Jonathan - your remarks about curiosity and the need for our kids to simply be inspired so align with our team's thoughts. Recruiting their interests and building relevance is such a powerful force when it comes to inspiring them.  So far, Minecraft has been a reliable tool in that department!

And Ryan - so cool to hear that your kids have a supportive administration excited to explore the Minecraft potential. In full disclosure, at the onset of this project, we were a bit concerned that teachers and their admins would be reluctant to give it a whirl given that it is a game without any direct and concrete educational connection. But we very quickly learned that educators are fast to see the potential for it in the classroom. They seem to most enthusiastic about it because of how excited kids are about the game, as well as the flexibility and latitude the game provides in terms of connecting so easily to different content areas.

Hi Lisa! Thanks so much for the positive feedback. We too agree that leveraging the excitement around Minecraft has helped us realize the potential impact. Throughout our journey, we've met some really exciting educators and researchers using it as a platform to address so many different content areas and disciplines. The blank canvas nature of it seems to encourage not only the kids using it for learning to be creative, but the educators designing the learning itself!

Luke - this is such a great real-world story about the power of Minecraft to not only engage not only the reluctant learners but all students, as well as the blank canvas nature of Minecraft to support teaching across all disciplines. Thanks for sharing!

Luke, that was one of our initial concerns/challenges, whether Minecraft would be widely of interest, but it was nice to see our assumptions shattered when we moved forward to run the camps. We have talked about whether different kinds of storylines may appeal to different kids, but having a storyline seemed to make a significant difference over simply placing spatial reasoning tasks in the platform.

We decided to focus on mental rotation and transforming between 2 and 3 dimensions.  The interventions were in-game puzzles modeled after the The Purdue Visualization of Rotations Test and Lappen's Coded plans.  We found that these were easy to port over to Minecraft.  We also provided students with paper maps of areas that they needed to explore.  This forced students to transform between the two-dimensional map and the three-dimensional virtual world they needed to navigate.

To assess learning gains we administered two spatial instruments both pre- and post-intervention.  These instruments made use of questions that are found on other validated instruments.  We also had students rank their confidence level for each item on these instruments.

We have received the original developers permission to modify the PVST, and we recognize this mitigates the validity of the instrument. 

In addition to the modified PVST, the second test focused on the 2d-to-3d transformation spatial skill, and was adapted from the Spatial Reasoning Instrument (Lowrie, Logan, & Ramful, 2017) and the Spatial Visualization Test (Lappen, 1981).

These modified instruments have not gone through rigorous validity and reliability measures, and our goal is to address this limitation with future research.

Barrett, I am delighted to see your work with spatial visualization. It is a skill that is so important and highly valued until the Common Core. Visualization is non existent and even g3-D eometry plays a minor role.

I was intrigued to see the mention of Spatial Visualization test by Lappan et. al. I am a colleague of Lappan and I helped develop the test. It was designed to test the effects of our Middle Grades Mathematics Module, Spatial Visualization. I am curious to know if you used some of the activities from the unit. How much paper and pencil work do you have students do with the cubes before or during the computer explorations? Have you tested male/female spatial abilities before or after the experiment?

Elizabeth - it is wonderful to hear from someone that contributed so significantly to the work on spatial skills in middle grade. And thank you for your encouragement!

You ask a great question about how much paper and pencil work/hands-on cube exploration we had the students do before they moved to Minecraft. We started each day with about 1 hour of non-Minecraft spatial visualization work before they transitioned to the computers, and then interspersed some exercises throughout the day. Then, while solving the puzzles, we always provided the paper/pencil activities and cubes for them to use as additional manipulatives.

When it came to this work, we routinely found ourselves in an engagement bind though. The summer camps were marketed as "Minecraft and Spatial Skills", but as you can expect, the kids were there to play Minecraft :) We recognize and value how critical that paper/pencil and cube work is to their development, but no matter how engaging we made that component of the intervention, the kids remained focused on Minecraft. So it turned into a delicate balance each day. 

Interestingly, we did pre-test the male/female spatial abilities, and found no detectable significant difference at the start. We recognize that our work was far from perfect as this was just a design and development project. Our goal moving forward it so build our sample size, and continue refining how and when we pre-test and post-test and integrate the spatial ability modules.

Hi Stacey! Thanks for your question. We are currently working on ways to convert the intervention so it is more readily available and useable across a variety of learning contexts.

Nathan - You make such an important point about the metacognitive benefits of students being aware of what they are learning. We could not agree more it encourages engagement by keeping them focused on initial goals and the relevancy of meeting those goals, not to mention encourages self-assessment and reflection. 

Our intervention design does include considerable advanced organizers that provide students exposure to spatial skills and the role that spatial skills play in STEM learning. We front-load much of this while the kids are learning the basics of Minecraft like how to move and build in the environment, as well developing an better understanding of the social expectations needed to work in a digital-based collaborative learning environment. More specifically, with the help of our spatial skills experts, we developed a series of non-Minecraft-based activities that introduce them to the spatial skills they will be practicing during game-play, and include real-world connections to each of those spatial skills. 

Thanks again for the feedback and great question!

Nathan, you hit on a point that was also a delicate balance for our team. To what extent does transparency about the spatial reasoning tasks reduce student engagement (I just want to play in Minecraft, but they're making me work!), but to what extent does embedding these tasks undermine their learning in this area just for the reason you indicated? We also wanted to make sure that as students got practice with spatial reasoning tasks they weren't simply getting better at completing our spatial reasoning assessments, but that it was improving their underlying skills. You raise a really important question as we move the project forward in terms of how else we might improve lesson design. Thank you!

THanks for your responses Nick and Bryce! I love the potential this project has going forward to engage students in the learning! Often STEM activities focus on engagement, but are less about meeting particular learning objectives. Great to hear you’ve considered the learning here as well!

Thanks for the positive feedback Omar! We are currently working on ways to convert the intervention so it is more widely available.

Well-said Sunni! The idea of Minecraft as the "hook" perfectly captures the engagement that Minecraft can build in learners. 

Thanks for the encouragement Sonia! Developing the storyline was an exciting part of the project.

We started the development process by working with a group of partner 4th and 5th grade classrooms to brainstorm ideas based on genres of literature they see as most engaging with their students.  Based on that initial pool of ideas, we surveyed 4th and 5th grade students for the concept they felt would be most compelling, arriving at the post-apocalyptic world where the students are to follow clues left by their ancestors to collect items needed to beat the final zombie boss. Those items are collected when they solve the spatial skill puzzles and complete the mazes. 

We were particularly intent in arriving at a plot that would be equally as engaging for both males and females, and those data we collected indicated this was a universally-engaging storyline.

Our wonderful preservice teachers preparing to be English educators and elementary educators then wrote the storyline that was stylistically-accurate and developmentally-appropriate, and compiled then it into a quasi-graphic novel format for the kids to use to guide their efforts during game play. We concluded by vetting the storylines again with our partner teachers.

Ultimately, post-intervention data confirm that the storyline was a hit with the participants! It is certainly an exciting component of our project.

Thank you! We appreciate the comment. Let us know if you have any specific questions about the project!

We decided to focus on mental rotations and transformations between two and three dimensions.  These topics were fairly straight forward to port into Minecraft and are both crucial skills for STEM related fields.

One of my favorite aspects of Minecraft is letting the students express themselves.  We have incorporated free build into our interventions where we give students a design goal and let them loose.  This past summer we asked students to design a fort that could repel a zombie hoard.  It was incredible to see what they were able to build in such a short time.

Adding onto Barrett's response, we are looking at some other applications for future directions of the project. There are so many opportunities for aligning these activities with different school standards that we are thinking through what we learned with this project and considering other applications that would also be of use to parents and teachers. For example, in addition to alignment with math and science standards, are there places for alignment with English Language Arts? Given how we shifted to a story-based experience for students, there appears to be opportunity for ELA alignment that may even integrate skills across standard areas.

Kristin - we have found that working with mental rotation and 2d-to-3d transformation activities work well with that age. In fact, a perfect resource for you to consider are some of the activities included in the Middle Grades Mathematics Module, Spatial Visualization. One of the developers of that work, Dr. Elizabeth Phillips, commented earlier in this thread. Definitely worth exploring for your camp!

thank you!