Thank you for taking time to learn about SimScientists Games. We are investigating how digital games can be part of a middle school curriculum enhancement that includes simulation-based and game-based activities that teachers can use to review concepts, integrate practices, and gather data from student actions that can be used in a formative assessment process. We are also exploring ways to include collaboration with a virtual peer built into the game. We're developing two games and are conducting extensive play testing with individual students, feasibility testing in classrooms, and plan to conduct two pilot tests at increasing scales.

You do a very nice job of laying out the nature of your research, and I also appreciate your sharing of the challenges you are currently wrestling with in the development of this project. There is a lot of story to tell in only three minutes, but it would be interesting to learn a little more about what impact your seeing on student engagement. The video does an excellent job of describing your research design, and leaves me wanting to know more about how it's looking on the ground where you've been implementing it.

I especially appreciated your point about how student goals may not always align with the designers' goals. I'd like to hear more about how you are creating the evidence model for your game, and in particular how you are taking student goal-setting into account. Do you think you will be able to tell the difference between a student who has set a playfully different goal (such as unbalancing the ecology as much as possible) and a student who is groping and confused? Or will you try to reduce / avoid students setting their own goals? If so, how do you think you might accomplish that?

Building off of Jessica's comment, in games like this, we don't always see the alignment between our goals and the goals that the students set. This becomes even more apparent when the students working on something that is engaging like this game. In your work, have you found evidence that students understand or sense that they are using science practices and developing those skills?

Thank you for sharing your project.  Can you explain how the simulations are embedded in the middle school curriculum?  How are they introduced, how long are the students engaging with the simulations and what happens in the lesson sequence after the simulations are over?

Hello! Thanks for sharing this great video. These activities seem quite engaging and informative. What larger issues in middle school science do these games address? How do you see them fitting into pre-existing classroom structures?