Empowering Minority Youth STEM Learning through

Community Partnerships in Educational Game

Design

Alex Games Ph.D.

Microsoft

NSF statistics (U.S. 2007)

Job growth in STEM fields is 4 times total national workforce growth

Demographic trends suggest growth in STEM trained workforce will slow down and shift toward minority populations, particularly Hispanic

U.S. trails most OECD nations in secondary school completions and Hispanic students graduate high school at 20 average points lower rate than white peers

Hispanic representation in STEM professions is reducing in relation to their proportion of the U.S. population

Why teach STEM concepts through game design?For many Hispanic youth, videogames are an entry experience into computer technology

Modern computer games are built upon sophisticated computer simulations of real world systems (Clark et al. 2009)

Games tie the pursuit of understanding models to player goals (perceptions, identity, Games, 2010)

Good design pedagogies promote three mutually-reinforcing levels of understanding systems (Games, 2010)

Designer(s)AUTHORS

Game(s)MESSAGES

Material Play(TOOLS ANDCOMPONENTS)

Player(s)AUDIENCES

Ideal Play (MENTAL MODELS)

Real Play(CULTURE)

Assessing STEM Learning Pre and Post Camp

Words

Goals

Rules

Assets

Spaces

Play Mechanics (e.g. predator-prey)

Design and Concept Decisions

Inquiry

Audience

Modeling

Tool Use

Artifacts

Strategies

Practices

Learning STEM through Game Design

Programs within informal learning settings have a history of game design as a pedagogy

The Science and Art of Game Design

Uses a reverse engineering computational problems “under the hood” of games

TACIT => ARTICULATE KNOWLEDGE

Analogical Reasoning

STEM Game Design as Inquiry

Community Partners: one learning, everywhere

Conclusion

Educational Game Design is a space where youth can use THEIR OWN VALUED KNOWLEDGE to learn OTHER KNOWLEDGE, through PROBLEM SOLVING and PROBLEM POSING

Design and reverse enegineering are powerful methods to contextualize abstraction

Assessment as both product and process