SciFair: Game Worlds for Learning

Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University

What is it?

What problem does it solve?

In 1998, Cornell Universitys Cornell Theory Center (CTC) for

high-performance computing and interdisciplinary research
founded SciCentr, an online museum of 3D virtual worlds containing interactive exhibits employing research conducted at
Cornell on such subjects as the evolution of stars, the physics of helicopter flight, the volatility of stock markets, and the
bioengineering of crops. SciCentrs virtual exhibition environments3D, multiuser online chat worldswere developed to
engage young people in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) subjects. The environments are currently
in use as teaching aids in K12 science classes. In 2001, the
CTC began an outreach program called SciFair that matched
15 middle school students at Tioga Countys Spender-Van
Etten Central School with Cornell student mentors, who helped
the teens build their own virtual knowledge spaces combining
science exhibitions with game interactions. A portion of the
online SciCentr museum was dubbed SciFair and set aside for
the display of these student-developed virtual worlds.

The SciFairs core value as a 3D multiuser, chat-enabled virtual environment lies in its capacity to unite participants in an
immersive, meaningful, and highly social context for shared
exploration. A great deal has been written about the learning
styles of todays students, with study patterns shaped by their
immersion in massively multiplayer 3D gaming worlds. Efforts
such as the SciFair outreach program use these emerging technologies to deliver instruction to a population of young people
who are already fluent in multimedia and in simulation-based
virtual settings. These same youngsters generally prefer communal learning approaches in which instructional experiences
are co-designed, personalized, and situated in the context of a
collaborative community that balances guided mentoring with
hands-on experimentation.

Supported by funding from Cornells Office of the Provost

and from the GE Foundation, the SciFair outreach program
has grown to involve more than 1,000 students and teachers
annually from schools in Washington, California, Virginia, and
New York. SciFair students create alien landscapes, medieval
fortresses, and rainforests, filled with information presented
in interactive formats. As they build their simulations, middle
school students first master the medium, then take ownership
of their own worlds, and finally work in teams to design, build,
and present virtual science communication exhibits that represent a new collaborative way of organizing, presenting, and
sharing knowledge.
Face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar showcase events allow students to demonstrate their team projects to school superintendents, families, friends, and peers. For example, middle
school students have been asked to construct their own
virtual greenhouses inside the GeneDome, a SciCentr virtual laboratory developed by Cornell researchers and CTC
staffers to demonstrate Mendelian laws. Because students
are focused on the enjoyment they derive from this creative
exercise, they pick up a strong understanding of the research
issues surrounding hydroponics without realizing how much
solid research and patterns of scientific communication they
are absorbing in the process.

Science museum and science fair as

familiar metaphors
Many faculty members find it difficult to shift toward immersive
and interactive modes of instruction, particularly when the skills
involved in designing and implementing educational simulations
lie outside their own experiences. The science museum and
the science fair, two long-standing models for effective public
outreach and student engagement, provide the CTC with familiar metaphors that help carry teachers and students beyond
their immediate comfort zones into the virtual realm.
For example, adopting the metaphor of the interactive science museum, Cornell undergraduates, graduate students,
and staff members have designed virtual planetariums and
laboratory settings. Visitors to the SciCentr virtual museum,
for instance, can enter the Skyview world where they wander under a night sky, proceed through a series of information
spaces linked to online information about star formation, and
demonstrate their knowledge of astronomy to make their way
successfully to the observatory, where they can chat with the
avatar of a Cornell astrophysicist and enjoy a changing roster
of shows. Insofar as these interactive worlds replicate triedand-true process models for informal learning (the science
fair, the Exploratorium, the observatory, the lab), they allow
students to learn and to practice new skills within a meaningful
context. Researchers refer to this principle as situated cognition and have demonstrated its effectiveness in many studies
over the past 15 years.

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SciFair

Students engaged in game design

As Richard Van Eck observed in his recent EDUCAUSE Review
article on digital game-based learning, educators generally adopt three approaches for integrating games into the
learning process: have students build games from scratch;
have educators and/or developers build educational games
from scratch to teach students; and integrate commercial offthe-shelf games into the classroom. SciFair aspires to be a
combination of all three approaches by providing a commercial software program for simple, customized world creation,
along with teams of trainers and an enabling infrastructure to
support the collaborative design efforts of Cornell students,
CTC staff, middle school students, and their teachers.
For teens with more advanced skills, virtual worlds are a
medium that allows them to thoughtfully combine digital slide
presentations, graphics, and sounds in exciting new ways to
represent ideas and information. Some rise to the challenge
of modeling their own custom 3D objects and writing plugins (bots) that support custom game features. Undergraduate
mentors learn to communicate clearly and coach successfully online using multiple frameworks, from electronic discussion lists to e-mail and instant messaging. They also learn to
work in a shared file system with Internet servers. Teachers
and coaches expand their computing and graphics skills during training and begin to think about ways to apply this new
medium to specific content areas. They, too, learn to maintain
regular online communication through a variety of modes and
get a glimpse of the inner workings of the computing network
at their schools.

How did they do it?

For its technical platform, SciFair currently uses Active Worlds, a
Web-based commercial software application with an integrated
chat feature that allows users without programming skills to
create 3D interactive worlds with relative ease. Currently, Cornell hosts 80 virtual worlds created for the SciCentr and SciFair
programs. For distribution and community-building purposes,
Cornell licenses two virtual worlds within the Active Worlds
Educational Universe. which charges educators an annual subscription fee based on the size of the virtual world, the number
of simultaneous users, the number of student licenses required,
and the kind of custom development services requested. Committed to providing educational opportunities that serve the next
generation of computational scientists and engineers, the CTC
is also examining other technological platforms that promise
to expand the range of world-creation activities and interactive
learning opportunities available to students and educators.

Success will also depend on systematic training for district

teachers who must learn to see the educational possibilities
inherent in the new medium. The design of such interactive
content is costly in terms of human resources and will benefit
in future from further collaborations that cut across institutional
and disciplinary boundaries.

Why is it noteworthy?

Student engagement and interaction: The SciFair

venture follows a classically constructivist educational
approach that emphasizes hands-on, team-based experimentation along with student investment in the learning
process.

Curricular alignment: The SciFair outreach program

asks both educators and students to develop interactive
exhibits that align appropriately with state and national
curriculum standards, offering learners a creative way of
reflecting on required STEM studies.

Familiar framework: Based on the concept of a traditional science fair, the CTC process model for the team-based
creation of 3D information spaces helps faculty embrace
unfamiliar instructional approaches.

To learn more
Visit the SciCentr Web site at [Link]

To share your innovation

If your institution has a practice that you believe would be of interest to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, please share it with us.
To submit your innovation for review, please use the ELI Innovations Contribution Form on our Community Exchange page
<[Link]
A panel will review your submission and make a recommendation to the ELI staff.

About the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) is a community of higher
education institutions and organizations committed to advancing learning through IT innovation. To achieve this mission, ELI
focuses on learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies. We believe that using IT to improve learning
requires a solid understanding of learners and how they learn. It
also requires effective practices enabled by learning technologies. We encourage institutions to use this report to broaden
awareness and improve effective teaching and learning practice.

The content included in the SciCentrs interactive exhibits is

aligned to national and state learning standards for those school
districts participating in the CTCs SciFair outreach program.
The challenge is to design worlds that require students to think
critically and creatively, work as teams when called on to do so,
and reflect on what they have seen, done, and accomplished.

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April 2006