At Teachers College, Columbia University, the Games Research Lab has created Greenify, an online social platform designed to foster flourishing sustainable communities. Gamification elements facilitated the creation and completion of user-generated missions, encouraging interaction between geographically proximate communities of peers. Three elements were identified as necessary components to achieve sustainable communities: a healthy climate and environment, social well-being, and economic security. This paper describes our approach in addressing these elements through a crowdsourced, gamified system. Implications for HCI are also discussed.
Background: A key question in K-12 STEM education is how best to guide students as they engage in exploratory learning activities so that students develop transferable knowledge. We investigated this question in a study of teacher talk guidance of an exploratory activity called Invention. In this study, teachers worked one-on-one with students, guiding them as they attempted to invent ratio-based equations of physical science phenomena. We applied the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) framework as a theoretical lens through which to explore different forms of teacher talk guidance and resulting student talk. The ICAP hypothesis predicts that constructive engagement leads to greater learning than active engagement, which in turn leads to greater learning than passive engagement. However, students do not always enact the type of cognitive engagement that teachers prompt. In this paper, we work towards three goals: (1) to explore the forms of cognitive engagement prompted by teachers and enacted by students in their talk, (2) to test the ICAP hypothesis in the novel context of teacher-student dialog during Invention, and (3) to identify effective forms of teacher talk guidance for Invention activities and other exploratory STEM learning tasks. Results: While the majority of student talk was active, teachers produced an even distribution of constructive, active, and passive prompts. Teacher and student talk types tended to align, such that students often responded with the type of cognitive engagement teachers invited, with the exception of passive talk. In general, teacher talk showed the most robust relationship with students' abilities to transfer, while teacher-student dialog demonstrated a weaker relationship with transfer, and student talk was not significantly related to transfer. Some evidence for the ICAP hypothesis was found, most prominently in teacher talk, where constructive prompts positively predicted transfer, active prompts were not related to transfer, and passive prompts negatively predicted transfer. Conclusions:This research implies that teachers should use a large proportion of constructive prompts and relatively few passive ones when guiding students through Invention tasks, when the goal is to provoke transfer of learning to novel contexts. This work also extends the CAP portion of the ICAP hypothesis to teacher-student dialog and underscores the teacher's critical role in encouraging students to cognitively engage with exploratory STEM tasks in effective ways.
Background Design thinking, with its emphasis on iterative prototyping and mantra of “fail early and often,” stands in stark contrast to the typical one‐and‐done, failure‐averse culture of the classroom. Iterative prototyping and fail‐forward mindsets could promote valuable iterative practices and positive reactions to failure, but little research has examined their impact in K‐12 contexts. Purpose In two studies, we investigated the effect of a brief prototyping intervention on students' iterative knowledge, desires, and behaviors; self‐reported reactions to failure; and performance on a design challenge. Design/Method Study participants included 78 and 89 students in grades five and six, respectively. Students in an iterative prototyping condition (Prototype) were taught the process and fail‐forward mindset of iterative prototyping. In a comparative, content‐focused condition (Content), students focused on using science and math concepts in design. Results In both studies, Prototype students gained greater knowledge of iterative prototyping, reported a greater desire to iterate, and engaged in more iterative behaviors on a novel, unsupported design challenge than Content students. In Study 2, students in the Prototype condition reported more positive affect and actions in reaction to failure and produced more successful designs than their Content counterparts. However, regardless of condition, students who iterated earlier created more successful designs. Conclusions These studies provide an existence proof that instruction on the iterative prototyping process and mindset can encourage students to try early and often and promote healthier reactions to failure. This work also demonstrated a performance benefit to testing one's design early in the design process.
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