SBIR-STTR Award

This SBIR Phase I project will produce a Virtual Reality (VR)-based multiplayer game in which high school-aged players must collaboratively think through and solve complex, authentic Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM)-based problems. The United States faces a shortage of degreed STEM workers. More than half of high school students have indicated that they aren't pursuing STEM degrees or careers because they feel unprepared for or unaware of the opportunities available to them. Further, many students indicate they're interested in science and crave engaging, real-world experiences, but feel that they have limited authentic STEM opportunities in school. There is a need for experiences that engage students in authentic collaborative STEM thinking, and this project seeks to provide them with a compelling virtual problem space using VR. This project also seeks to provide educators with an accessible technology pathway to bring premium VR hardware into schools. Though VR has been heralded as a transformative technology, it currently faces expense and scalability hurdles for in-school use. By leveraging a mixture of technologies and role-based multiplayer, this project will create the virtual context to help players see problems as solvable through reason, experimentation, and collaboration - the heart of STEM philosophy. Players will work together, sharing their knowledge and expertise, running experiments, and solving difficult, compelling science problems.The core technical innovation of this project is the design and deployment methodology that will make premium Virtual Reality (VR) experiences a practical tool for schools. The project will result in a multiplayer experience in which one player uses the VR headset to act as the field agent, supported by 5-25 other students using traditional devices with role-based interfaces to act as mission control. By developing asymmetrical (but equally compelling) play experiences, the project will engage all students in collaborative Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) problem-solving. There are three main problems that this project must solve for educators: the hardware problem (VR hardware is expensive, difficult to scale to more than one student at a time, and requires installation and maintenance); the ambitious pedagogy problem (providing hands-on discovery and inquiry experiences that allow for meaningful collaboration and problem-solving); and the embodiment problem (students need to feel personally invested in the problems we devise if the experience is to be meaningful and transformational). The research goals are 1) To determine whether STEM-based scenarios can be generated with sufficient depth to engage a group of high school-age students in collaborative, interdisciplinary thought and problem-solving across both field agent and mission control roles; and 2) To determine whether the multiplayer role-play experiences produce significant improvements in STEM content knowledge and disposition among players. In order to measure these goals, multiple usability and feasibility tests will be conducted in authentic formal educational environments. Each test will be accompanied by a pre- and post-test that measures both content knowledge and disposition.

This SBIR Phase II project is a game-based learning virtual reality (VR) and desktop experience focused on fostering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and robotics interest in young people. The project's intent is to address the growing skilled labor shortage in STEM fields and prepare learners for the cross-industrial rise of robotics. Through exposure to experiential STEM learning, the project will create a groundswell of student interest and aptitude that will help close STEM workforce gaps in the long term, as well as plant the seeds for a future cohort of robotics professionals. The project's hypothesis is that its game-based VR-enhanced learning platform can reliably instill design/engineering thinking skills into learners while exceeding the capabilities of existing educational tools in terms of scalability and adaptability to student needs. The project is additionally intended to drive K-12 VR hardware adoption by providing a compelling and teacher-customizable solution that will justify institutional hardware investments. When proven scalable, the project will act as a beachhead for other VR and game-based learning entrants to bring their own innovative learning content into the K-12 ecosystem, simultaneously promoting the progress of science in alignment with the NSF's mission, as well as providing a broad economic lift to the American economy by unlocking a new market sector. As a VR-first experience, this project will provide students with a first-of-its-kind immersive robotics sandbox that allows for hands-on experimentation. Players will be able to form hypotheses, build robots, test, and iterate, mirroring the processes of project-based robotics and maker programs. Beyond robot construction, the project will offer challenge courses that test players' ability to build to specification. Each course will require a different physics-based solution for which a capable robot must be constructed. For example, a course might challenge players to navigate a set of stationary obstacles and then place a cube on a pressure plate, requiring a robot with maneuverability and the ability to pick up, transport, and place objects. This task serves as a model of the underlying dynamics of engineering design: identifying a problem, thinking critically, and developing a solution engineered specifically to that problem. To establish this project in the larger context of teaching media, it will be developed as a desktop-only intervention, a VR-only intervention, a desktop/VR hybrid intervention, and a paper-based control intervention. These variants will be tested with middle school and high school end users to verify the efficacy of game-based VR as a pedagogy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.