In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, The Franklin Institute Science Museum will develop, test, and pilot an exportable and replicable cyberlearning exhibit using two cutting edge technologies: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The exhibit's conceptualization is anchored in the learning research vision of the NSF-funded workshop Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future (Computing Research Association, 2005). The incorporation of VR and AR technologies into the Franklin Institute's electricity and Earth science exhibits is an innovation of traditional approaches to hands-on learning and will improve the quality of the learning experience for the primary audience of families with children and elementary school groups. The project has implications for future exhibit development and more broadly, will provide new research on learning on how to incorporate cyberlearning efforts into traditional exhibits. Fifteen participating exhibit developers across the ISE field will assist in the evaluation of the new exhibit; receive training on the design and development of VR and AR exhibits for their institutions; and receive full access to the exhibit's new software for implementation at their informal learning sites. The technology applications will be developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center--leaders in the field in Virtual Reality design and development. Front-end and formative evaluation will be overseen internally by the Franklin Institute. The Institute for Learning Innovation will conduct the summative evaluation. Research will be conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education on the effects of AR and VR technologies on exhibit learning.
Researchers at the U.C. Davis will carry out observations of museum visitors to plan for a study of how visualizations affect visitors of an Earth Sciences exhibit using 3D technology. The researchers will be able to conduct an experimental study about how much participants in an education center learn from the model of earthquakes and of a model of the Lake Tahoe basin. The researchers will conduct a quasi-experiment of a sample of 100 visitors to the center at Lake Tahoe to study their experience with visualization and learning of science. The funding for this phase of the project will include the development of audience surveys, conducting focus groups to develop types of feedback, train staff to conduct data collection, and to conduct a literature review of technology visualization.
FETCH with Ruff Ruffman is a daily half-hour PBS television series with accompanying Web and outreach activities targeted to 6- to 10-year olds. The program brings science learning to young children by uniquely blending live-action with animation, game show convention with reality programming, and humor with academics. The intended impacts are to 1) help the target audience develop interest, knowledge and skills necessary to do science; 2) train afterschool leaders to better facilitate science activities with kids; and 3) demonstrate how media can be used to teach substantive science and share the results of project evaluation with others in the field. The requested funds will allow the project to expand the science curriculum with 20 new half-hour episodes and expand the Web site, focusing on three new science themes that highlight topics of interest to this age group. The Web site will include four new science-based Web games that will allow kids to create and post content of their own design and contribute to nationwide data collection. A new FETCH Online Training resource will be created to help afterschool leaders to effectively engage in FETCH's hands-on science activities. American Institutes for Research (AIR) will conduct summative evaluation of the Online Training program.
In this Communicating Research to Public Audiences project, the University of Colorado at Boulder -- in partnership with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, and the CU-Boulder Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement -- is building on the work they have done via their NSF research award, A Meta-Design Framework for Participative Software Systems, in which they have been developing participative software systems (PPS) and applications of the framework. Community of Soundscapes will employ newly developed mobile computing and collaborative mapping technology in programs that help users gain greater insights and stake into the shared environment in which they live and visit. Sound Camera, a digital recording device outfitted with GPS mapping software, allows users to collect audio clips of their sonic experiences as they explore their cities, parks and other environments and upload them online onto a digital map through a Web 2.0 application. They can then compose, annotate, and share soundscapes of the places where the sounds were recorded. A Web site will be developed to expand the project's reach to audiences not in the Boulder programs. Professional development training will be provided for collaborators and through the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education. The educational goals are to promote literacy of PSS and engage the public in personally meaningful activities that benefit environmental education (cognitive goal) and expand environmental awareness (affective goal). The project work and its evaluation processes (by Wells Resources, Inc.) are intended to advance the field of informal science education with respect to PSS and to study how these new technologies might affect shifts in the kinds of experiences various audiences prefer to have.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gerhard FischerElisa GiaccardiGerhard Fischer
Red Hills Studios proposes to design and develop BioArcade, a suite of online biology games for youth ages 9 to 13. Unique to the field of educational games is the specialized and innovative modding feature that Red Hills Studio will develop. Modding will allow learners to create their own customized versions of BioArcade games for dissemination to other learners. BioArcade games are intended to encourage extended game play and motivation for learning key biology concepts through exciting interactive game modules developed by a leading group of game developers and science content experts. The underlying educational and scientific framework for BioArcade will be developed collaboratively with Co-PI, Dr. Janis Cannon-Bowers at the University of Central Florida and Roger Bybee at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), along with the projects Scientific and Design Advisory Boards. The project will rigorously evaluate modding as a potential new approach in game design. The modding innovation will be studied in a three-condition randomized controlled trial to determine its effectiveness in promoting deep exploration of scientific concepts and increased knowledge gain. Results of the study will be disseminated to the informal learning community through peer-reviewed educational journals, papers, and presentations at science education and game conferences. Extensive formative and summative evaluations, conducted by Knight Williams Research Communications, will provide valuable insight and assessment of the game design approach for science content learning in informal venues. BioArcade will be widely disseminated daily to millions of young learners online through PBSKids: www.pbskids.org/
This project will create and study Kids' Survey Network as an exemplar of a new, replicable model of informal learning called an apprenticeship network. The project will develop the data literacy of future learners, workers, and citizens by empowering participants aged 11-14 to develop survey projects to address their own questions about local community issues. Research on the project will illuminate core questions relating to the design and potential impact of the apprenticeship network, including social and motivational dynamics, community and technology-based scaffolding, educational game genres, and conditions of effective use. The project deliverables include four components: (1) a web-based community of practice; (2) a common set of tools; (3) a suite of learning games and tutorials; and (4) structures for tiered, team-based advancement. Tertl Studios LLC and MIT's Education Arcade will develop the learning games, SRI International will conduct the evaluation, leading regional and national informal education organizations will provide test bed sites, and professional survey research organizations will provide technical and volunteer assistance.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth RoweDiana NunnaleyChristopher Hancock
Video games have been heralded as models of technology-enhanced learning environments as they exemplify many of the ideas emerging from contemporary learning sciences research. In particular, such games promote learning through goal-directed action in simulated environments, through producing as well as consuming information, embedded assessments, and through participation in self-organizing learning systems. Research suggests that participation in such environments involves many forms of scientific thinking and may lead to increased civic engagement, although to date, there are few examples of game-based learning environments that capitalize on these affordances. This project will investigate the potential of online role playing games for scientific literacy through the iterative design and research of Saving Lake Wingra, an online role playing game around a controversial development project in an urban area. Saving Lake Wingra positions players as ecologists, department of natural resources officials, or journalists investigating a rash of health problems at a local lake, and then creating and debating solutions. Players will solve challenges within an interactive, simulated lake ecosystem as they attempt to save the lake, working for one of several constituencies. This design-based research project will span the full life cycle of a project, from case studies of learning in small, constrained settings to controlled experimental studies of games implemented across classrooms. In addition to asking if participation in scientific role-playing games can produce robust conceptual understandings, it will also examine if role playing games might serve as assessment tools for comprehending scientific texts, assessing conceptual understandings within scientific domains, and designing innovative solutions to environmental problems that draw upon scientific understandings. The education plan includes the production of game-based media that can be used to support a variety of research studies, an online professional development community of educators using games for learning, support for graduate students trained in game theory, the learning sciences, and new forms of assessment, and new courses in game-based learning and assessment.
The Minnesota Zoo and Eduweb will design and develop "WolfQuest," an online, 3-D, multiplayer videogame based upon the behavior, biology and social structure of the gray wolf. This dynamic interactive experience will allow learners to become a virtual wolf (avatar) to explore gray wolves within an authentic virtual replication of wolf habitat and social structure. The scientifically accurate graphic representations of the virtual environment will afford rich and robust learning of wolf behavior, biology and habitat ecology. Participants are intended to emerge from the learning experience with a clear understanding of wolf conservation issues in the real world. "WolfQuest" is supported by a website that will function as a self-sustaining community of learners who will participate in discussion forums with wolf experts, and receive ongoing gameplay information and interaction with other participants. Additionally, the project website will provide educational guides for parents and teachers, interpretive materials, incentives to reward participants' achievements acquired through "WolfQuest" gameplay and provide a link to informal environmental organizations throughout the country. The national informal education network will afford regional customization of "WolfQuest," as well as provide social interaction among participants and organizations. The national participant network will disseminate and promote the "WolfQuest" game and wolf-related science programs. Two kiosk installations will be deployed at the Minnesota Zoo and the International Wolf Center for extended learning opportunities at those sites. Project assessment will aggregate data on learners' content acquisition, attitudinal change, game engagement and will yield guidelines for the field on effective practices in development of science education games, along with appropriate methodologies for evaluating game-based learning.
The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies and the Museum of Science, Boston will create life-sized, 3-D Virtual Humans that will interact with visitors as interpretive guides and learning facilitators at science exhibits. Through the use of advanced artificial intelligence and intelligent tutoring techniques, Virtual Humans will provide a highly responsive functionality in their dialogue interpretation that will generate sophisticated interaction with visitors about the STEM content related to the exhibit. The project exemplifies how the confluence of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and education can creatively and collaboratively advance new tools and learning processes. The Virtual Human project will begin to present to the visitor a compelling, real life, interactive example of the future and of the related convergence of various interdisciplinary trends in technology, such as natural language voice recognition, mixed reality environments, para-holographic display, visitor recognition and prior activity recall, artificial intelligence, and other interdisciplinary trends. The 3-D, life-sized Virtual Humans will serve as museum educators in four capacities: 1) as a natural language dialogue-based interactive guide that can suggest exhibits to explore in specific galleries and answer questions about particular STEM content areas, such as computer science; 2) as a coach to help visitors understand and use particular interactive exhibits; 3) be the core focus of the Science behind the Virtual Humans exhibit; and 4) serve as an ongoing research effort to improve human and virtual human interactions at increasingly sophisticated levels of complexity. The deliverables will be designed to build upon visitor experiences and stimulate inquiry. A living lab enables visitors to become part of the research and development process. The project website will introduce visitors to the technologies used to build virtual humans and the research behind their implementation. The site will be augmented with videos and simulations and will generate user created content on virtual human characters. Project evaluation and research will collect language and behavioral data from visitors to inform the improvement of the virtual guide throughout the duration of the grant and to develop a database that directly supports other intelligent systems, and new interface design and development that will have broad impact across multiple fields.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William SwartoutDavid TraumJacquelyn MorieDiane PiepolH. Chad Lane
This is a proposal for a 3 year, $1,297,456 project to be conducted as collaboration among 5 higher education institutions and one school system across the country, with St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA serving as the lead institution (other collaborators are from Colorado School of Mines, Ithaca College, Santa Clara University, Duke University, and Virginia Beach School System). The primary goal is to attract and retain students in computer science, especially women and underrepresented minorities (including two EPSCoR states). To this end, the project will use Alice, a software program that utilizes 3-D visualization methods, as a medium to create a high-level of interest in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling among high school students, hence to build understanding of object-based programming. Such an IT focus on media and animation is aligned with national computer science standards. The project will build a network of college and high school faculty, who will offer workshops and provide continuing support during the academic year. In each site, pairs of teachers from each participating school (total = 90) will learn with university faculty via a 3-week summer program in which an introduction to using Alice for teaching will be followed by teacher development of materials for students that will then be used to teach high school students. An experimental start at one site will be followed by implementation at four additional sites and culminated with revised implementation at the sixth site (1-4-1 design).
TERC will develop Earth Window, a visualization system for generating photo-realistic Earth images and fly-overs that offer a new method for earth science visualization designed for non-scientific audiences. Based on front-end research to determine a baseline of visitor knowledge and misconceptions, the project team will create the Earth Window Research Lab using the GeoFusion visualization engine and WorldSat "digital earth" remote sensing database. This prototype will undergo formative evaluation with visitors to explore a variety of interfaces, navigation systems, levels of interactivity and presentation formats, along with researching the roles of metaphor, user control, false color, authenticity and changes over time to determine how best to employ this technology in ways that maximize visitor learning. BROADER IMPACTS: Based on the outcomes of the formative research, TERC will refine the visualization technology and integrate it into different types of existing exhibits at four museums: Museum of Science (MA); Montshire Museum (VT); National Air and Space Museum (DC); St. Louis Science Center (MO). "Windows on Earth" will enable some 1.8 million people to benefit from remote Earth sensing datasets, allowing them to explore the planet in ways not otherwise possible and thereby improve understanding of key issues in Earth science and their connections to daily life. In addition, the project will develop, test and refine a new visualization tool that then can be replaced and applied by the science museum community at large.
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences proposal is based on current NSF-funded research, AST 0607505, "Asteroid Satellites and Spins." Finding NEO (near-Earth Objects) proposes an 18-month-long project to develop on-line and museum traveling exhibit-module deliverables that provide users with both video vignettes of amateur astronomers engaged in NEO asteroid studies and at least three interactive game-like experiences on the science content and processes, specifically the analysis of "lightcurves," i.e., changes in light reflectivity off of spinning asteroids. The staff of the Space Science Institute will create these products in partnership with four small science museums around the country (2 in CO, NY, WI). The on-line material will be user-accessed via current astronomy web sites that already are popular, for example, www.spaceweathercenter.org. The videos and software will be made freely available for download. All materials will be both in English and Spanish.