Hi Everyone, Thanks for coming to our video. In 2019 we completed our second field test with 13 teachers and their students (a first field test was completed in 2018). The results show significant gains for scientific argumentation competencies. Our teachers also identified a high degree of positive social interaction in the classrooms (as kids were helping kids), high engagement and leadership by a number of students who were not typically strong science students, and a desire to teach with MHS in the future. We struggled with a number of technical issues as the variety and general low capabilities of the computers in the schools was a challenge for our vision of high quality visual and interactive experiences for student learning. In addition there are some technical aspects of the game that still need improvement. Overall we are encouraged by the results and plan to continue development and work toward making MHS available broadly to teachers and students.

We look forward to hearing your comments and addressing any questions. You can also learn more at MHS.missouri.edu

Hi James and the MHS team—excellent work on the game and homepage!

I'm especially curious about the argument structure tool users interact with after collecting evidence. Does it trigger once learners collect all possible evidence? Or if some users collect more evidence, do they then have access to more evidence when they're forming their argument?

In our project this year, we have also been exploring student problem solving in an open-world context, and have similarly found the need for some cognitive scaffolding, particularly for multi-step problems. Your team's solution, interacting with Dr. Topo in the argument structure interface, seems like a great way to help the learner consolidate information and practice scientific argumentation, without giving too much away. 

 HI Luke,

Thanks for checking out our video and for your question. We follow Osborne's approach to using learning progressions to teach scientific argumentation, so in the early units the student is only doing part of an argument but as they progress through units they take on responsibility for more complete arguments. The evidence they collect as they go through the unit is not represented as a set of evidence they can then use in the argument engine. Rather the argument engine somewhat abstracts or selectively uses some of the evidence to make a manageable task and something for which we can provide feedback when students make errors. The arguments themselves were crafted to be meaningful activities that emphasize the level of progress the student has made on Osborne's progressions and so that when students made types of errors we could provide feedback to shape their understanding.

Hope that is clear.... Thanks

 Also, thanks for sharing a link to your project....I'll check it out later.

This video really gave a good sense of the experience of using your game. I have been looking for examples of uses of digital technology that truly transform STEM education - and I think your game is one!

Since our Noyce projects are ultimately designed to prepare STEM teachers who are empowered to use technology to transform their teaching, I'm curious about not just the students, but the teachers reactions to your product.  How did it change the way they teach science?

Great work with this game.  The graphics are very well done and the storyline is engaging which should help with being able to reach the target audience.

Cheryl, Thanks for checking out our video and for your comments about the graphics and storyline. There are lots of game types but we think the narrative story where the player has a role in problem solving has great potential to engage and provide rich learning.

 Really interesting.. and appreciate the focus on skill building within the game environment.  I would love to hear more about what it looks like in the game for a student to frame and defend an argument.  You mention giving students feedback as they progress through the game - how is this done..  Is it an AI type response or a person?  Is this a role a teacher would play?  I went to your website and saw one teacher testimonial and would love to hear more about teacher responses.  Thanks --- good work happening!

This is a really neat idea! It reminds me of the Nancy Drew interactive games (HerInteractive) I used to play when younger, where I did puzzles and looked for clues to solve a mystery, or like Geniventure (Concord Consortium) where students work with genetics to breed dragons.

When students interact with the NPCs, are they given choices about what to say? How do the person-to-person interactions work? I am curious about how you bridge student-driven argumentation within the framework of a designed game. Also, does the game need to be run on a computer, or will it work on touch devices? Making the shift to touch devices has been the newest obstacle for our development team on ConnectedBio, although I'm pleased to report that the progress is moving steadily!

This looks like so much fun, both for the development team and for the students participating in your field test! How large is your development team? Are you outsourcing the programming and graphic design or does your team include that expertise?

Well this is really cool! Can you describe the professional learning you had for teachers? What do you see happening with Mission HydroSci in the future?

Thanks for checking out our video and your questions. For the field test teachers participated in an asynchronous set of online course activities that took about 3 hours, had a guidebook to help them during class periods, had an opportunity to play the game (which most did not or did not get too far), and had a facilitator that sent out daily suggestions and responded to questions and issues. We are currently working on a scale up grant that would enhance all of those options including using video to show a lot of the game play activity. Our goal is to have have MHS available to schools and teachers in some form of a product as soon as possible.....but still quite a bit of work to do.

A fun virtual adventure in scientific argumentation and problem solving! It is great that there is a dashboard for the teachers and how it allows teachers to help students and sometimes work through the argument with him or her.

In one comment above, regarding the triggering of the argumentation engine - this is very important, as it would see that getting all the facts summarily vs. getting them piece-wise would train different but related skillsets.  Can you expound on how the engine abstracts or selectively uses some of the evidence to make manageable tasks/ provide feedback when students make errors?  Are these done in real time as the player collects evidence.  

Michael, Thanks for checking out our project. I'll try to be clear about how argumentation works in the game, but it is not one thing....there are numerous aspects of learning to make an argument which culminate in using the argumentation engine in each unit. For example in Unit 3 Sam's garden is not growing because of pollution. Our player traces the source of pollution up the river primarily by throwing sensors to check if pollution is present at points on the river. Players take different routes as they work there way to the pollution so they collect different amounts of evidence and probably have a bit of a different understanding of the river flow and places that are polluted because of their individual choices. Once they have found where the pollution is coming from they get some refreshing about doing an argument and orienting toward the aspect of argumentation being emphasized in this unit (the game is setup following Osborne's progression approach to learning argumentation). Then the player enters the argumentation engine as a way of convincing one of the other players who controls resources that they should come and dig up the area and extract the pollution, but who is at first not convinced that they should spend their resources.

In the argumentation engine our player selects among claims for where the pollution is....based on what they discovered, and then selects evidence which is an abstracted version of what students would have collected as well as reasoning. The argument uses the evidence and context the player has come to understand but implements a crafted version of it so we can provide appropriate feedback to errors the student make.  Hope that helps clarify. best

This project looks quite amazing!

The graphics are phenomenal and I can see real merit in the concepts learned through the game play.  I could see this being useful for even my multivariable calculus students, using the topographical map (contour plot) to determine where they are in the game environment!

This basic game structure could be adapted to help students learn a large number of different concepts in a very enjoyable way.

We could discuss gradient vectors, paths of steepest ascent (or descent) and so many other things from multivariable calculus.