This SBIR Phase I project proposes to design a robotics-based gaming system for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education that is attractive to girls. The hypothesis is that physical game-based learning from play patterns that revolve around a robot's storyline, with interactions and negotiation in the physical world, can attract and retain girls' interest in STEM. The system contains four technical innovations: (1) interlocking, story-telling game tiles, (2) mobile robot pets with a novel tile-tracking system, (3) interactive games that engage girls in the virtual and the physical world, and (4) downloadable game content from the Cloud. The system supports a diverse set of play patterns, such as virtual programming, physical programming, story mode, dynamic maze construction, and mat programming. The link between the game tiles, the robot Pets, and the Pet Planet Cloud support a nearly limitless diversity of activities and challenges. The mobile device and cloud game server provide an interface for collecting data such as level completion, success rates, and time on task, which provides an opportunity to evaluate interest and learning. We will use this infrastructure to identify the play patterns that are more successful with girls, and in the long term to evaluate the success of the game at developing STEM skills.
The broader/commercial impact stems from the nearly limitless expandability of our modular design. The goal is to reach millions of girls and boys who will be having too much fun playing with robot pets and game tiles to notice that they are learning logical reasoning, procedural thinking, spatial reasoning and probabilistic reasoning. While the project is initially focusing on girls, the system extends to boys and can also be used to encourage the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM. The project plans to make donations to schools and non-profit organizations to reach underserved students. The firms data collection and evaluation will help us understand how to modify game content to encourage STEM education for underserved communities. The projects ultimate goal is to increase the general public's engagement with science and technology, which is possible with technical games and toys that can be accessible at a relatively low cost. The project team consists of a partnership between academia, non-profit organizations, schools and industry; as a mutually beneficial collaboration.
The gender gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) remains a large and persistent problem, particularly in computer science and engineering. This project involved designing a robotics-based gaming system for STEM education that is attractive to girls. In this game, children choose a pet robot and use a smartphone to program the robot to navigate over tiles. Our hypothesis was that experience with the game would increase girls’ motivation in STEM. Our main objectives for the NSF SBIR Phase I grant period were: 1. Building a working robot game. 2. Evaluating the game design through play testing with girls and boys. 3. Gathering data to iterate the design from the research with children. 4. Transitioning from prototype robots to preproduction units. We prototyped and built over 10 robots on a succession of different platform designs. The final prototype is based on the r-one open source platform. We completed a manufacturing run of 30 robots and several dozen tiles to prototype the game rules and for playtesting. We built mobile software for robot control and gameplay and we designed and implemented five different play patterns. Technically, we have solved many of the engineering problems required to take our product to market. We collaborated with the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences to conduct a psychological study.The feedback from that study, and from additional demonstrations we had not originally planned, was overwhelmingly positive, with children of a wide age range enjoying our game. The psychological research study reports the following findings: Abstract Can playing a programming game with robots get girls more interested in STEM? Six-year-old children (N=92) were randomly assigned to play a programming game with "Pet Planet" robots, a storytelling card game, or neither (control condition). We measured STEM-gender stereotypes, task motivation, and STEM motivation. Although all children held stereotypes associating robots with boys, girls enjoyed the Pet Planet robot game as much as boys. Playing with the Pet Planet robots increased girls’ efficacy and motivation in STEM. During our Phase II grant period, our goals are: 1. Create plans for a small volume production run of the basic game set, which consists of a robot, 6 tiles and a removable pet shell. 2. Develop multi-player games based on a story about bees. 3. Study the effects of collaborative play using our games on girls’ STEM motivation. 4. Study the effects of long term exposure to our games on girls' STEM motivation.
