Welcome to our presentation! This is a collaborative research project with Dr. Florence Sullivan and her students at UMass Amherst, myself at Elms College, and the non-profit Holyoke Codes. We welcome comments, questions, and feedback, and hope to connect with community members with similar interests.

Such a cool game idea!  I'm curious how long is the game, and what is the best context for it (classroom course, out-of-school program, home, or other). Can it be played by teams who are not in the same place? And what was your inspiration for this?

Thanks Renee! We are preparing 15 hours of curriculum using the GaleForce game which could be used in or out of the classroom. It is a multiplayer virtual game where users could connect from anywhere but is limited to about 16 students at a time at this point. Our initial research project was in-person with Lego EV3 robots, using the same immersive narrative of helping PR during a hurricane,  but we pivoted to develop a virtual platform due to COVID.  

Hello Beryl, 

I love this idea ! Our physics team in Arizona does a similar disaster simulation project at the end of our unit on introductory kinematics in freshman physics. One of the things we did was create situations where kids would have to calculate scenarios out like how much time would it take to rescue a survivor from point A vs point B, and would you have the capacity to get to both with time constraints etc.. I think there is ton of value in using something like this to introduce distance, displacement, time, and speed to a class and was wondering if you have thought about this in writing your game scenarios? I see so much possibility for this game and I'm excited to learn more about it. 

Mike 

What an engaging way to learn about coding at the possibilities in robotics! What are the learning outcomes of the game? Does the game collect data on student actions to understand how particular design choices influence learning? What are your goals for scaling this project?

Hi, all! I think the scenario is really compelling.

From the sound of it, your focus is on teamwork and collaboration. I'm curious -- what have learned about girls' interest in and attitudes about computers and coding? (How do you see teamwork/collaboration interface with and relate to computer/coding?)

If you have some kind of instrument you are using to measure attitude and/or skills (interpersonal or computational), I'd love to know!

I love the idea of making it into a game! It reminds me of learning games I played growing up. It was so much easier to keep playing and learning because there was a story I was following and goals I wanted to accomplish within the game. How have students reacted to the game in beta tests?

Thank you for your comments and questions! Students have reacted very positively so far! They want to keep playing even after the workshop is over. The story and the virtual game environment increases engagement. We are using a pre/post survey to measure attitudinal changes and a pre/post test to measure changes in robotics and coding knowledge.

Beryl, can you speak a bit more to if you developed or are using a pre-existing, validated set of instruments for attitudes and robotics and coding knowledge? (I ask as a co-PI on a computational modeling in physics program -- and measuring these skills from a pre-test standpoint is really difficult when students don't have a good sense of functions or programming environments).

I love how the focus is on girls! As a researcher and Co-presenter for IC4, we have had middle school girls from all over the world (Pennsylvania, NYC, Brazil, Finland) building Arduinos! They have a bond with the other girl scientists and media-makers that they don't develop in other clubs. They teach each other how to code and together they strengthen each others knowledge and skills. 

Great to hear about the success of your project, Toby. We are definitely hopeful of similar outcomes.

I appreciate the focus on responding to real world problems! I look forward to learning more about your research results.