Teaching Space Science to Middle School Students using Serious Games in a Post-COVID World

Async Paper Presentation ID: 59306
  1. Brian Grey
    Harrisburg University of Science and Technology
  2. aaa
    Sa Liu
    Harrisburg University of Science and Technology
  3. Peter Hastings
    DePaul Univeristy

Abstract: SpacEscape is a problem-solving mobile serious game designed to teach space and solar system science to middle school students through interactive problem solving. While our research was intended to be conducted in a formal, classroom setting, the worldwide shutdown due to COVID-19 in March 2020 caused this plan to be no longer viable as schools went online. This provided us with an opportunity to study how effective serious games are in decentralized and unregulated situations. While we found that participation rates decreased significantly from our previous research, those who completed all stages of the study as specified (n = 17) showed a significant increase in pre- and post-test scores (one-tail t-test, df = 30 p = 0.021) as well as pre- and retention test scores (one-tail t-test, df = 32, p = 0.018). While these results seem promising, this represents an initial analysis and warrant further exploration

Topic

Conference attendees are able to comment on papers, view the full text and slides, and attend live presentations. If you are an attendee, please login to get full access.
x