Researchers at North Carolina State University are harnessing the growing potential of video game software to foster science achievement and IT skills of North Carolina high school students while helping them fulfill a newly implemented graduation project requirement.
Through a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, members of NC State's College of Education have teamed up with the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science and international gaming company Virtual Heroes Inc. to design and implement the GRADUATE (Games Requiring Advanced Developmental Understanding and Achievement in Technological Endeavors) program.
GRADUATE researchers will develop easy-to-use game creation tools that will assist students in completing North Carolina's new graduation project requirement. Beginning with the class of 2011, students who wish to graduate from a North Carolina public high school must complete a graduation project. The North Carolina Graduation Project includes four components: a research paper, a product, a portfolio and an oral presentation.
Researchers will work with 40 teachers and nearly 150 members of the class of 2011 from Lee Early College in Sanford, N.C., and Hillside New Tech High School in Durham, N.C., two redesigned high schools serving disadvantaged rural and urban populations, to pilot gaming as a means to motivate more students to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related (STEM) degrees and careers.
Dr. Len Annetta, assistant professor of science education at NC State and lead principal investigator on the project, said the program will investigate the effects of student-created games on the students' attitudes toward STEM subjects, achievement in learning content and motivation to enter STEM-driven careers. Annetta says the program will also help the students, under guidance of their teacher advisors, to meet North Carolina's new graduation project requirement.
Students selected to participate in the program will develop interactive video games that will motivate and enable their peers to learn about the aspects of STEM-related careers. Outstanding student-created games will remain in a repository for future teachers and students to use in teaching and learning science content.
"Ideally, our goal is that students will create educational games that appeal to their counterparts so that teachers can then integrate those games into their classrooms," Annetta says. "The potential of this innovative means of meeting the new graduation project requirement, while explicitly engaging students in 21st century skill-building and STEM career exploration, will be communicated to all North Carolina school systems for potential replication."
Dr. Edwin Gerler, professor and director of graduate programs for counselor education at NC State, will assist in the project by helping students – directly and through stand-alone online resources – make connections between the STEM content they will be working with and actual careers.
Through the grant, the GRADUATE program will fund four new fellowships and three alumni fellowships in the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science. The selected Kenan Fellows – highly qualified teachers from the New Tech schools who will partner with university researchers – will transform cutting-edge scientific research into standards-based high school classroom instruction and online curricular materials available thereafter for statewide use. Dr. Valerie B. Brown-Schild, director of the Kenan Fellows Program for Curriculum and Leadership Development, will serve as a co-principle investigator for the project.
Dr. William DeLuca, associate professor of technology education, will spearhead the design of curricular guides – one for teachers, one for students and one for evaluators – that will help school districts throughout the state use GRADUATE as a model for future graduation projects.
"GRADUATE as an acronym is the driving force behind the project," Annetta says. "We have seen a trend throughout the state that many students are dropping out of school because they are bored and disengaged in the classroom, not necessarily because they are unintelligent. By partnering students with their teachers to create games, we are creating a new and engaging way of learning and teaching complex STEM content."
Beside GRADUATE, Annetta currently has four other active NSF grants to study the effects of video games on teaching and learning: HI FIVES helps teachers increase science achievement in fifth through ninth grade students in North Carolina; STIMULATE provides learning materials and strategies to engage initial licensure science teachers in real classroom issues; GRID-C teaches STEM concepts using data collected from renewable energy technologies at the N.C. Solar Center; and OUTBREAK prepares high school learners to participate in the biotechnology workforce by educating them about moral decisions within the field.