In this video, SciPlay Project Manager and Lead Designer Adiel Fernandez discusses the Science Playground “intervention” and the SciGames slide project. Plus, a group of visiting students show how it’s done.

The Slide game is part of SciPlay’s SciGames project. By using a fun, interactive game format, SciGames will allow students to investigate scientific principles, experiment with different variables, and collect and analyze data.

Diagram: Going down slide

Diagram: Landing in hot air balloon

Diagram: Going up in balloon

Diagram: On Target

Summative Assessment Design
To meet proposed learning goals, SciPlay designed a summative assessment that measured the following constructs:

• Student affect was measured by looking at the students’ behavior during the time they played the game. The research design was set up to see how attentive and alert the students appeared throughout the time they played the game and whether they interacted with peers and the facilitator. SciPlay researchers observed student reactions during the course of the game to see if students were attentive and alert. Students were asked if they were enjoying the game, i.e. “how much fun are you having?”, to document their affective perceptions of the game. SciPlay researchers also measured whether students were having fun by looking at how happy they were behaving while playing the game.
• It was also important to learn if the guided play game supported repeated gameplay that had elements of the scientific inquiry process, as both games were designed to reward the player who could induce the underlying scientific patterns from the data. Researchers wanted to see if students engaged in inquiry-based gameplay and if their data-based reasoning improved as well.
• Lastly, researchers were interested in finding out whether positive affect and experimentation in the context of the game could go hand-in-hand with a measurable impact on content learning, as measured by pre- and post-tests.

Recruitment and Subjects
A total of 43 middle-school students participated in the study. Students were recruited from P.S./M.S. 029 Melrose School in the Bronx. Students had diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Of the participants, 47 percent were female and 53 percent were male. Following the Institutional Review Board guidelines, parental consent student assent was obtained for each participant.