This interactive poster session brings together 11 projects using a range of digital computer technologies to improve science and math learning, including simulations, games, and other cyberlearning tools and environments. In addition to increasing communication and collaboration among these researchers, a key goal of this session is to discuss the diversity of research questions that each project (and the community as a whole) is engaged in, the research methodologies used, and the coupling between the research questions and the selected methodologies.

Each projects’ research questions reflect its particular goals and approaches. The research methodologies are, in turn, driven by the research questions of interest. This session allows participants to share the types of research questions that are of interest to them and why, to discuss the advantages and limitations of different research methodologies, to highlight all the different types of data being collected across these research efforts, and to discuss the types of research questions that can be examined with those data. The session provides time to brainstorm about the forefront of the research—what are the biggest questions at this time and how can the community begin to examine them?

The poster session is designed to benefit both the presenters and the participants. By including such a diverse range of projects, presenters aim to share knowledge about research questions, effective research methodologies, and challenges across this group of PIs who do not regularly communicate with each other about their projects. In addition, for participants who seek to include digital computer technologies in their projects, this session brings together a large number of possible partners and provides insight into the goals and active research areas.

Participants are invited to play online games embedded in a data-analysis environment, analyzing their game data to improve their strategy. The structure follows an abbreviated version of classroom activities that presenters are now field testing. Product release is scheduled to begin in fall 2012. (Participants should bring a laptop computer that can connect with conference wifi.) With each game-based activity, subsequent discussion focuses on different issues about which presenters would like feedback. Among these are: What are the mathematical ideas and habits of mind that can be developed with these activities and how best can the materials support the teacher in encouraging their development? How can classroom teachers be best supported with online materials? How can the presenters put together a coherent package of movies, online worksheets, teacher notes, and assessments? What reactions do you have to the design principles that have evolved, and what further directions seem worthy of pursuit? With each game, participants discuss in small groups a question or two like these and submit their responses in an online form. General discussion will follow based on displayed responses.

Presenters also engage participants with two methods of analyzing student work that have proven especially powerful: (1) videos that show both the computer screen and the faces and voices of a pair of students working together; (2) graphical analysis of student actions as recorded in a log file generated by the Data Games Web application.

A final discussion is based on a short presentation of plans for the public launch of Data Games, scheduled for the fall. Presenters ask participants to draw on their own experiences as authors and consumers to help the PIs avoid pitfalls, reach a broad audience, and plan for sustainability.

This panel presentation showcases various NSF DR K–12 projects (Data Games, Evidence Game, MathSnacks, PhET, and TESLA) and the role of the classroom teacher in these project-related online, game-, and simulation-based learning environments. The session presenters highlight the envisioned role teachers play when implementing each game or simulation project. Presenters also discuss how the vision of the teacher’s role has evolved during the life of some of the projects. This is followed by a panel discussion about their experience determining the appropriate roles for the teacher; how the role of the teacher informs the design of the games and simulations; and supporting teachers for success in their role.

The session brings together seven DR K–12 projects focused on game-based STEM learning and assessments of science content and inquiry. The panel provides an overview of what they know about how learning takes place in games and how each of these projects is crafting assessments in virtual and game-based environments. They focus on strategies for leveraging popular game mechanics with research from the learning sciences, psychology, science education, and computer science to support and assess players as they develop robust understandings of core scientific concepts and practices. A synthetic discussion then explores challenges and opportunities for integrating research from these fields synergistically rather than disruptively within popular game-play mechanics. The projects include:

Argumentation: A Middle School Game-based Approach—Marilyn Ault discusses designs for leveraging competition and timed challenges to enhance engagement and fun within the Evidence Game. The discussion explores data collected about the relationship between racing elements of the game and the overarching focus on scientific argumentation at the heart of the study from a disciplinary perspective.

Promoting Problem Solving and Engagement—Jon Rowe discusses how intelligent game-based environments can promote problem solving and engagement in science learning by integrating affective connection with virtual characters (agents) within the game and core challenges in problem solving. He discusses laboratory and classroom studies with the CRYSTAL ISLAND game-based learning environment, investigating engagement (motivation, situational interest, presence) and central issues of problem solving (strategy use, divergent thinking, and collaboration) with respect to achievement as measured by both science content knowledge and transfer.

Socially Engineering Gaming Communities to Bootstrap Formal Understanding—This project scaffolds explanations between players to support articulation of the intuitive understandings players develop through game play. The presenter discusses data from a study on the natural collaborations that occur between students as they play SURGE. These natural collaborations include both spontaneous face-to-face collaborations within the classroom as well as contributions within online strategy forums integrated within the SURGE for each classroom.

Embedding Principled Assessments into Serious Learning Games—This project integrates evidence-centered assessment design within game mechanics to shape game challenges, rules for success and failure, and advancement through game levels. This discussion focuses on approaches for design of embedded, unobtrusive assessments within the game that balance the rigor and structure needed for cognitively principled assessment with the fun, exploration, and challenge of gameplay.

SAVE Science: Situated Assessment Using Virtual Environments for Science Content and Inquiry—This series of virtual-environment-situated assessment modules assesses both science content and inquiry in grades 7 and 8. The modules make use of a novel assessment rubric based on student interactions within an authentic context-based science curriculum—embedded in a virtual environment—and relate the assessments to standardized test achievement.

AutoMentor: Virtual Mentoring and Assessment in Computer Games for STEM Learning—This program uses an automated mentoring system that utilizes natural language conversations to help students learn about science and technology, and an assessment/analysis protocol to quantify students’ STEM behavior. This project combines automated tutoring with an automated mentoring technology, AutoMentor, with Epistemic Network Analysis, which analyzes the framework that compares the way learners solve problems to the epistemic framework that an expert might use. This project is studying middle school students either in after-school or in-school programs.

Leveling Up: Supporting and Measuring High School STEM Knowledge Building in Social Digital Games—This project is developing a set of wireless and Web-based free-choice game elements using game mechanics based on Common Core high school science concepts. The game elements will use the model of layered learning that comes from professional game design to create challenges where completion of the game element is only possible through understanding the basic game mechanics (thus the principles of science). In another grant, Arcadia: The Next Generation—Transforming STEM Learning through Transmedia Games, developers are embedding these game elements in a transmedia social game environment. Arcadia will host cross-disciplinary science inquiry games that make use of the individual game elements from Leveling Up and use the electronic activity logs and artifacts from games to measure the ICT and inquiry-skill development in the context of science investigation.