The Transforma?ve Games Ini?a?ve: Blending Undergraduate Research with Games-­‐Based Learning Robert O. Duncan, Department of Behavioral Sciences, [email protected] INTRODUCTION The National Council for Undergraduate Research
encourages faculty to mentor students or infuse
classrooms with research-like experiences. However,
faculty members are typically overwhelmed with
requests for mentorship, and student-faculty
interests do not always align. The Transformative
Games Initiative provides students with
opportunities to design games for education,
behavioral intervention, or social impact. The design
of each game is rooted in the Learning Sciences.
Games are excellent learning management systems
that are capable of teaching and assessment. Many
games were designed to benefit matriculating
freshmen who are underrepresented in STEM and
who might be the first in their family to attend
college. An iterative design-based research program
was developed to answer the following foundational
questions: (1) What can be learned about the
process of learning by blending game-based learning
with undergraduate research; (2) What skills can be
taught; and (3) What data need to be collected to
assess learning outcomes?
The Transformative Games Initiative benefits
freshmen, undergraduate research students, and
research faculty. By designing behavioral
interventions or games for social impact,
undergraduate research students may deepen their
understanding of domain-specific problems, applied
behavioral design, programming, and design-based
research. Matriculating freshmen may benefit when
informative games are incorporated into freshmen
orientation programs and seminars. Research faculty
can create a pedagogic research program that
complements their primary research program.
Game-based learning allows faculty to work with
more students on a wider number of topics without
jeopardizing their primary research program. These
experiences may be scaffolded to prepare students
for the primary research program.
RESULTS !
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Figure 1: Screenshot from “Restaurant Rockstar,” a student-designed videogame to educate
peers about Nutrition Facts labels. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in urban youth.
Poverty is known to be the single most reliable predictor of obesity in the United States. Yet, food
awareness is another major covariate with obesity. Consequently, Sade McIntosh, an
undergraduate student at York College, designed a game to inform urban youth about the
nutritional content of common food items. The game incorporated over 8000 food items and 53
macro- and micronutrients from the NDL/FNIC SR-25 Abridged Nutritional Facts database. It was
predicted that students who played the game were more likely to score higher on a post-game
assessment of nutrition than students who were merely told to memorize the content.
!
Figure 2: Screen shot from “tSNE Viewer,” student-designed visualization software. Mass
cytometry affords measurement of as many as 37 specific proteins in a single cancer cell (see
schematic). Analysis of this data is complicated by limitations in visualizing more than three
dimensions at once. t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) is a robust
multidimensional scaling algorithm for mapping higher-order datasets to lower-order dimensions.
Undergraduate students Nicholas Weir and Rawnok Reyeka incorporated t-SNE into their
visualization software, tSNE Viewer, to better understand multidimensional cancer datasets. tSNE
Viewer provides intuitive, real-time interactivity with data, including fast axial rotation, cell type
labeling, and using a mouse hover function to return expression values for individual cells.
!
CONCLUSIONS METHODS The overall effectiveness of the program was
evaluated from the perspective of faculty members,
undergraduate researchers, and participating
freshmen. Satisfaction was assessed for faculty
members using qualitative surveys and interviews.
Satisfaction in undergraduate researchers was
assessed using a nationally recognized survey for
such programs (Student Assessment of Learning
Gains). Quantitative data include faculty/student
participation, the number of projects that
terminated in a research product, and
measurements of individual learning outcomes for
each game.
Review of faculty surveys/interviews indicated that there
was a significant learning curve for launching a games-based
research program. However, those who created a program
served a greater number of students. Faculty reported that
students were deeply engaged in the primary literature, and
students learned skills independently to achieve research
milestones. All undergraduate students produced a terminal
research product. A few students excelled by presenting at
national conferences (n=2), winning awards (n=3), or
preparing journal manuscripts (n=1). SALG surveys indicated
satisfaction with the research programs, but more structure
was desired. Most reported that their experience benefitted
learning. A method for independently verifying these claims is
needed.
Faculty (n=18): The total number of faculty who continued
after 5 years was 13. Four faculty left the college and one
moved to a full-time administrative position. Several grants
were written, but no extramural funding was awarded. Few
papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. A large
number of conference proceedings were published with
students. A “Maker Space” was developed to promote
development of hardware and robotics. An interdisciplinary
course on the art and music of video games was developed.
An interdisciplinary group was formed to use simulations in
the Health Sciences. Faculty in Math and Business used games
in the classroom, but GBL was not integrated with
undergraduate research. The PI generated a majority of the
research projects with his students over the years (>50).
Undergraduate Research Students (n=173): All participants
generated a research project that culminated in a conference
presentation. Survey results indicated that students were
satisfied. Gains were reported for Thinking and Working Like
a Scientist, Personal Gains, and Gains in Skills. The lowest
reported gains were for “Ease in locating a mentor,” “Ease in
securing a research position,” and “Support and guidance
from support staff.”
Incoming Freshmen (n>15,000): Volunteers from the York
College Research Subjects Pool participated as research
subjects in several student-designed games. The sample
population was composed of freshmen enrolled in
introductory Behavioral and Social Science courses. Learning
outcomes for many games were inconclusive, but several
games demonstrated improvements in learning outcomes.
This report serves as a summative evaluation of work
completed thus far, which will be used to guide the next
iteration of program development. Immediate plans include
designing interdisciplinary courses in game design. Such
courses will provided much needed structure for the program.
RESOURCES !
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Figure 3: Sample cards from Panic Attackers, a game to teach students about anxiety. The
American Psychological Association has identified anxiety as a leading mental health issue in the
United States. College freshmen are particularly susceptible to anxiety, but these stressors appear
during a developmental stage when students may be less physiologically prepared to mitigate the
effects of stress. Incoming classmen who are less able to cope with new stressors may make poor
decisions that affect their academic standing. Consequently, Bilal Bashir, an undergraduate at York
College, developed a card game to teach incoming students about the various types of anxiety and
several appropriate therapies.
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Figure 4: Students and faculty members collaborate to make educational games.
Left: Students from the York College Summer Research Program collaborate on a
paper prototype of a game that teaches students about the limits of attention.
Right: Approximately 200 faculty members interested in game-based learning
shared their ideas at the 2015 CUNY Games Festival. Center: Faculty members
demonstrate their latest tabletop game at the CUNY Games Festival.!
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