Through a partnership between challenger center for space science education (ccsse), wisdomtools, and benedict college, we will infuse and validate a strong educational design for astronaut: moon,…

Through a partnership between challenger center for space science education (ccsse), wisdomtools, and benedict college, we will infuse and validate a strong educational design for astronaut: moon, mars and beyond, NASA's multiplayer online game. The collaboration will involve direct communications with NASA's learning technologies program office, the ammb development team and the external evaluators. Ccsse delivers space science education through 46 regional challenger learning centers. Benedict college in columbia, s.c, is a leading minority institution which is ranked second in the nation in producing african american physics majors. Wisdomtools, a serious games and e-learning company, is the learning content and mission design lead on the ammb development team, and will serve as the liaison between our team and the MMO developers. This collaboration will assure that the game has strong educational content, develops agreed-upon learning goals, and has an evaluation well-grounded in the defined learning goals. The proposal is for funding category 1, to conduct research with the NASA mmog development team to validate the effectiveness of the educational content and design of the NASA mmog. The team will ensure that the content and game design as well as the educational goals and objectives are designed to attract, engage, and facilitate stem learning for a diverse set of players. The work funded by this project will: 1. Define key learning goals, including content knowledge, thinking skills, and affective elements. 2. Work with the ammb development team to integrate these goals into game design and activities. 3. Specify connections between the learning goals and stem education standards. 4. Develop support materials to strengthen the learning, through infused activities within the game and ancillary activities for player learning and teacher integration and professional development. 5. Identify and make links to existing NASA educational materials that support the game and its learning goals. 6. Ensure the game design has relevancy and engages a diverse set of players, through our minority higher education institution, regional challenger learning centers, and public schools. 7. In collaboration with the external evaluator (selected under this RFP), develop tools for assessing in-game and collateral learning, directly keyed to the learning goals. 8. Work with ammb game development team to create an online gaming community so that innovative and diverse game design ideas can be contributed and integrated.