SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to build a system called CyberCollage as a cyberlearning tool to support computational thinking in STEM education at the middle school level. CyberCollage will enable the collective programming of educational games and computational science simulations through a social media approach that uniquely combines real-time synchronous collaboration with web-based multi end-user Programming. For example, multiple students would be able to work together on a Frogger game. While one student may be programming the frog a different student might be working on the turtles. Similarly, students can collaborate on computational science applications that explore questions such as 'can your frog live in my pond?' Both game design and computational science applications will be directly responsive to the computational thinking need of K-12 STEM education through cyberlearning technology. Cyberlearning technology addresses concrete needs in K-12 computer science education. The proposed combination of high accessibility through Web interfaces, increased motivational prospective through social media, and tested curriculum integrated into required computer education middle school courses is likely to reach a vast audience and attract women and underrepresented communities. The inclusion of strategies to support computational science applications will be relevant to STEM education and, through their integration into public schools, enhance public science understanding. The project has access to disadvantaged communities such as inner city, remote rural and Native American schools that can serve as testbeds for evaluation beyond Phase I. From a research point of view, the unique conceptual as well as technical aspects of Collective Programming are likely to result in significant contributions to programming language design, social interface design, social computing, and end-user programming. The common framework employed between game design and computational science has the potential to discover both, positive and negative, evidence for educational notions of transfer that are highly relevant to computational thinking

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project seeks to build a system called CyberCollage as a Social Cyberlearning tool to support computational thinking in STEM education. CyberCollage will enable collective programming of educational games and STEM simulations through a unique combination of networked real-time collaboration mechanisms and Web-based social end-user programming. For example, multiple students can work together on a Frogger game. While one student may be programming the frog, a different student might be working on the turtles. Similarly, students can collaborate on science simulations that explore STEM related questions such as "can your frog live in my pond"? Phase I established technical feasibility, and showed that complex science simulations with tens of thousands of agents can both run efficiently and be created collaboratively by students working together, locally, in the same classroom, or separated by hundreds of miles. Phase II will establish CyberCollage as a scalable cloud-based implementation of a Social Cyberlearning tool, and will integrate embedded assessment mechanisms that make learning outcomes in computational thinking both measurable and predictable. These assessment mechanisms enable the investigation and study of computational thinking transfer evidence between game and STEM applications. The 2010 PCAST report asserts that computational thinking is one of the fundamental concepts of networking and information technology. Fluency in computational thinking is needed to prepare today?s students to be the next generation of innovators and professionals. The proposed combination of high accessibility through Web interfaces, increased motivational prospective through social interfaces, and tested curriculum integrated into required computer education middle school courses is likely to reach a vast audience and attract both women and underrepresented communities to information technology courses and fields. This reach is enhanced by the participation of the National Center of Women in Technology (NCWIT) and Google in the Phase II advisory board. Both organizations are already disseminating AgentSheets Inc. computational thinking resources, which is an extremely positive indicator of a high probability of broad impact and commercial success. The CyberCollage project has established access to disadvantaged communities that include inner city, remote rural, and Native American schools in Alaska, Colorado, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. These and other schools will serve as testbeds. A pledged investment by a third-party organization should establish a consumer-oriented extension of CyberCollage, making Social Cyberlearning of computational thinking relevant beyond its original scope of educational applications.