Early Results from the Universe Quest

Carl Pennypacker [Associate Researcher, Space Sciences Laboratory]
Abstract:

After half a year of piloting and testing, we have found substantial engagement of a gaming authoring engine working with an audience of 12 to 16 year old girls involved in a Girl Scout program. The girls come from socio-economic groups traditionally not undertaking careers in science and technology. The goal of the program is to make them feel comfortable, gain confidence, and consider such careers in technical and scientific fields. The authoring tool enables materials including questions, images, and other media to be assigned to characters that the user can insert into the game.

One encouraging aspect is that even with what would be viewed as our primitive system, compared to "Second Life" or "World of Warcraft," we find that the girls become very excited about their work, and want to share the games they created with others including their peers and the community. After a session or two of learning game development techniques girls can create challenge activities, where a user will encounter characters that presents questions, which the user can answer. "Leveling up" is incorporated by the injection of new characters after correct answers are provided by the user.

Families nights are also an important component of the program. During these events families undertake astronomy activities, talk to program collaborators in Kenya, share their games, etc. As the program has progressed changes have been made to make the curriculum as relevant as possible to the girls currently in the program. As we move forward we are very optimistic concerning our progress and feel the future is bright and enables hope for the future of women in science.




Biography:
Carl Pennypacker, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, is the principal investigator for the Hands On Universe project. Dr. Pennypacker has spent much of his career as a research astrophysicist, receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1978. His principal research over the last decade has been studying supernovae and building techniques for their automated discovery. Dr. Pennypacker became tremendously excited by the power and potential of student and scientist partnerships when teachers and students started discovering supernovae in the HOU project.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• CITRIS
• UCB
• Research
• Science
• Technology