Building History 3.0 Project
Randall Fujimoto, Janet Chen, Kim Bathker, Renee Tajima-Peña
Building History 3.0 is an interactive web project that uses the 3D construction and exploration online video game Minecraft to engage young people and the public with the historic meaning of World War II Japanese American incarceration camps. It was created to engage the public--especially young people--with the historic meaning of World War II Japanese American incarceration camps. It explores the ways different generations have reclaimed and interpreted these sites, not only as places of trauma, but also of community building, creative expression, and learning. The preservation, dialogue, and understanding of these moments in history are increasingly important for students to understand.
Far more than a straightforward history lesson, Building History 3.0 encourages students to explore themes of civil liberties, democracy, immigration, and civic engagement. Young people sometimes perceive history lessons to be boring, placing emphasis on the memorization of facts, dates, and ready-made concepts. We aim to encourage young people to learn independently, investigate sources, think critically about history, and to analyze multiple perspectives. Building History 3.0 provides a platform for students to explore the balancing of national priorities with the rights of individuals and minority groups, the meaning of constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights in our daily lives, how democratic processes are strengthened or weakened during times of national crisis, and assessing the representation of racial and ethnic groups.
Mission HydroSci: Educational Game Meets the Classroom
James Laffey, Troy Sadler, Sean Goggins, Joe Griffin, Justin Sigoloff, Eric Wulff, Andrew Womack, Wenyi Lu
Mission HydroSci (MHS) teaches water systems and scientific argumentation towards meeting Next Generation Science Standards. MHS is a game-based 3D virtual environment for enacting transformational role-playing, wherein students must learn new knowledge and competencies in order to successfully complete the game missions. MHS was developed for middle school science as a replacement unit of about 6 to 8 hours and uses analytics and a teacher dashboard to help teachers support their students.
The MHS game provides an active learning environment for meeting these learning objectives by engaging students in a narrative about needing to investigate water resources and use scientific argumentation to complete missions critical to the survival and accomplishments of the members of their scientific enterprise. Along with the narrative gameplay MHS includes learning progressions for water systems science and scientific argumentation, a visually exciting environment, substantial interaction and feedback, and applies transformational role-playing as an approach to integrate learning within gameplay.
We plan a field test using a randomized control trial (RCT) to rigorously evaluate the impact of MHS game play. The RCT will be undertaken in Winter, 2019. However, to test the feasibility of conducting a large field test in classrooms we undertook a feasibility field test in the Spring of 2018. This showcase describes MHS, represents our process for developing MHS, and presents some insights and lessons learned about the use of MHS in classrooms including excerpts from interviews with the12 teachers who participated in the 2018 feasibility testing.
ARG-in-a-Box: Challenges in Designing an Anytime, Anywhere Science-Themed Alternate Reality and Augmented Reality Game for Middle School Youth
Scot Osterweil, Caitlin Feeley
Alternate reality games (ARG) and location-based augmented reality (AR) games leverage their ability to overlay narrative along with a digital layer of information onto real-world contexts, allowing players to investigate real and fictional phenomena and offering players meaningful choices, making them ideal tools for engaging youth in science education. However, both genres can be challenging to implement in educational settings (e.g., schools, museums, and out-of-school programs), for both the game designer (e.g., requiring real time behind-the-scenes facilitation of the ARG), as well as the game facilitator (e.g., customizing activities and/or the location-based AR game for their local setting). This paper describes a new approach, ARG-in-a-Box, along with the two goals of this project, (1) iteratively designing an “ARG in-a-Box” prototype which engages youth in scientific thinking through a series of related activities, and (2) describing the design and technological infrastructure necessary to support this anytime/anywhere approach.
