Applying participatory learning to STEM
E. Shaw, M. La, R. Phillips, and E. Reilly, “PLAY Minecraft! Assessing Secondary Engineering Education using Game Challenges within a Participatory Learning Environment,” in Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN, June 2014, Session W447.
Incoming and Outgoing Shipments in 1 STEP Using Odoo 17
PLAY Minecraft!
1. PLAY Minecraft!
Assessing secondary engineering education using game
challenges within a participatory learning environment
(Research to Practice)
Strand: Addressing the NGSS: Supporting K-12 Teachers in Engineering
Pedagogy and Engineering-Science Connections
Erin Shaw, Computer Scientist, University of Southern California,
Information Sciences Institute
Minh La & Richard Phillips, Undergraduates, USC Computer Science
Erin Reilly, Director Innovation Lab, USC Annenberg School of Communications &
Journalism
Thank you to Aninoy Mahapatra, Sam Shuster and Dr. Anthony Maddox
2. Warning
This paper is not about playing Minecraft!
Sorry :(
We studied
how children talk about Minecraft!
This is good stuff, too :)
3. Project overview
Goals
• Apply participatory learning to STEM
• Assess learning using Next Generation Science Standards
• Explore computational methods for assessing learning
Key ideas
• Social media/multimedia based science learning
• Discourse/context based instructional assessment
4. Project overview
What
• USC Undergraduate Research Associates Program (URAP)
• Ten weeks during summer of 2013
Who
• Two undergraduates (2B junior and sophomore)
• Graduate student advised on NLP/ML tools
• Programmer advised on platform and database
• “Committee” consisted of faculty and staff from schools
of engineering, communication and education
6. 1. Learning theory – Participatory learning
Participatory cultures (Jenkins)
• Have low barriers to engagement
• Support artistic expression, sharing creations, mentorship
• Foster New Media Literacies (NML)
- e.g., performance, appropriation, distributed cognition
• Focus on social skills developed through NMLs
Four C’s of participatory learning
• Creativity, Connection, Collaboration, Circulation
7. 2. Platform - PLAYground
PLAY! (Participatory Learning and You!)
• Project consists of technology and pedagogy
PLAYground
• Multimedia authoring environment
- Users create “Challenges”
• Designed around 4 Cs of PL
• Piloted by high school teachers
• Never used for STEM subjects
9. 3. Subject – Minecraft
What is Minecraft?
• Popular, free-to-play computer game
• Has dynamic virtual worlds built of LEGO-like blocks
• Players can combine blocks to “craft” items and to build
fantastical structures
Minecraft is a virtual engineering environment
12. 4. Standards – NGSS SEPs
NGSS emphasize 3 dimensions
• Science & Engineering Practices (SEPs)
- Behaviors that scientists engage in as they investigate and build models
and theories about the natural world
- And that engineers use as they design and build models and systems
• Crosscutting Concepts
- Provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from
various science fields
• Disciplinary Core Ideas
- Focus curriculum, instruction and assessments on the most important
aspects of science
14. 5. Methods – Topic modeling
Build corpora for subject and standards
• Minecraft – Scrape wiki
• SEPs – Copy all SEP text from NGSS document
• Both - Clean text (NLTK)
Process
• Pre-determine categories
• Fit topic model (MALLET)
- Resulted in each SEP and Minecraft category being associated with a
topic distribution (each topic consists of weighted vector of words)
-
15. Final topic categories
SEP categories
- Analyzing and interpreting data
- Asking questions and defining problems
- Constructing explanations and designing solutions
- Developing and using models
- Engaging in argument from evidence
- Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
- Planning and carrying out investigations
- Using mathematics and computational thinking
Minecraft categories
- Blocks, Items, Enchanting, Mobs, Trading, Redstone Circuits, and
Modifications.
16. 6. Data – Focus session
Small user study conducted
• Five boys
- grade 4(2), grade 8(2) and grade 11(1)
• Two hours
- 30 minutes discussing seed challenges (undergraduate created)
- 60 minutes creating own challenges
- 30 minutes discussing peer challenges
• Simple questionnaire
19. 7. Processing – Data mining
Export database tables
Organize user interactions
• Collect, link and order data
• Attach context, prompts, questions, etc.
Output to table for validation
20. 8. Analysis – Results display
Analyze user discourse
• Performed topic similarity matching of SEP and Minecraft
topics using topic distributions from pre-processed
categories
24. Discussion
Results
• Application of SEPs increases as grade level increases
• Mathematically gifted student identified through SEP assess
• Good subject category identification
Methods
• Validate, acquire more text, data, further experimentation
• New research to improve results using wordnet
Future
• Propose to apply techniques to middle school sciences
25. THE END
Thank you for listening.
Questions?
For more information please contact me at
shaw@isi.edu