Wisdom Tools (WT), in partnership with the Indiana STEM Resource Network (I-STEM), will design, develop, and test ICT-SPACE (ICT-STEM Professions And Careers Exploration), a game-based career exploration environment for 7th and 8th grade students. The primary deliverable for this ITEST Strategies project is a suite of six online mini-games that will allow students to "try on" five ICT-STEM professions, and then work collaboratively to solve a capstone challenge mission requiring skills from each profession. The primary goal of this project is to encourage middle school students, particularly those from underrepresented populations, to pursue STEM careers, and specifically Information and Communication Technology (ICT) careers, by increasing their awareness, engagement, interest, knowledge of and self-efficacy related to ICT and STEM activities and careers.
ICT-SPACE will be designed to be played at school, at home, and at other free-choice environments, thus providing multiple opportunities for continued career exploration at different times and locations. To support the games, Wisdom Tools will develop an online teachers' professional development program to assist with curriculum integration, lesson plans, standards alignment, technical issues, and strategies for extended learning.
A second project goal is to use the affordances of video games to design ICT-SPACE in a way that will attract underrepresented populations (females, ethnic/racial minorities, rural and urban economically disadvantaged populations) to ICT-STEM fields. The games will incorporate research-based serious game features that will appeal to under-represented populations, such as diverse non-player characters; the ability to choose diverse attributes for one's avatar; a variety of mission objectives; different reward structures; and different task types.
This project will strengthen the ITEST Strategies portfolio by contributing to our understanding of how to design a game-based career exploration environment to engage and interest middle school students, and underrepresented groups in particular, in ICT-STEM activities, coursework and careers.
