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1. Exploring the Development of Engineering Design Creativity and the Role of Spatial Skills in this Process

   Reid, Clodagh; Sorby, Sheryl (September 2023, SEFI Conference Proceedings)

   This study aims to investigate the development of creativity in engineering education and how spatial skills relate to creativity of design solutions. Undergraduate students in the first (n=86) and fourth/fifth year (n=48) of their engineering programme were invited to participate. Students completed four spatial tests to precisely measure visualisation skills. In a separate session, students were invited back to solve two engineering design tasks: a ping pong problem where they designed a ping pong ball launcher game to meet specified criteria and a rain catcher problem where they were tasked with developing as many ideas for capturing rainwater as a water source for a remote location as they could. Students were asked not to consider feasibility, cost, etc. and to come up multiple radical solutions to the rainwater capture problem. The creativity of design solutions was assessed using Adaptive Comparative Judgement. Statistical analysis indicated significant relationships between spatial skills, students’ year of study and gender. A statistically significant relationship was also found between students’ creativity scores on both design challenges. No statistical differences were determined in the creativity of first and fourth/fifth year students’ solutions. These findings will be discussed relative to existing research, future work, and potential implications for education practice. 

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2. Building Inventive Identity Through Sport: Change YOUR Game at the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation

   Garner, Joanna K; Grahn, Emma J (September 2024, Association of Science and Technology Centers)

   The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) will unveil its Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego exhibition in March 2024. The bilingual English-Spanish exhibition introduces the central role of inventors, inventions, and technology in the history of sports with an unexpected goal: to empower diverse visitors–with a special focus on adolescent girls, African American youth, and people with disabilities–to explore their own inventiveness and identify themselves as inventive problem solvers who can become "game changers" in their daily lives. In this lightning session on "Games and Play," Garner and Grahn will illuminate the thinking that led to shaping Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego around inventive identity. The conversation will describe how the central concept of identity exploration has informed the design and interpretive strategy of the exhibition, and how these ideas will come to life for the exhibition’s millions of visitors and for those who experience its suite of public programs nationally and internationally. The panelists will detail how the exhibition and its activities provide people of all ages, backgrounds, and interests the opportunity to learn STEAM-related content and practice inventive skills and habits of mind, such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, risk-taking, and critical thinking, as tools to explore and develop their inventive identity. Designed to include generative discussion, the session will allow participants to glean principles and concrete strategies for designing environments that aim to shift people’s identities in their own institutions. 

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3. Developing Math Knowledge and Computational Thinking Through Game Play and Design: A Professional Development Program.

   Smith, H. (October 2020, Contemporary issues in technology and teacher education)

   null (Ed.)

   The Game Play and Design Framework is a project-based instructional method to engage teachers and students with mathematics content by utilizing technology as a vehicle for game play and creation. In the authors’ prior work, they created a technology tool and game editing platform, the Wearable Learning Cloud Platform (WLCP), which enables teachers and students to play, create, and experience technology-augmented learning activities. This paper describes a 14-week Game Play and Design professional development program in which middle school teachers played, designed, tested, and implemented mathematics games in the classroom with their own students. Examples are included of teacher-created games, feedback from the students’ experience designing games, and evidence of student learning gains from playing teacher-created games. This work provides a pedagogical approach for educators and students that utilizes the benefits of mobile technologies and collaborative learning through games to develop students’ higher-level thinking in STEM classrooms. 

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4. Developing mathematics knowledge and computational thinking through game play and design: A professional development program.

   Smith, H. (October 2020, Contemporary issues in technology and teacher education)

   null (Ed.)

   The Game Play and Design Framework is a project-based instructional method to engage teachers and students with mathematics content by utilizing technology as a vehicle for game play and creation. In the authors’ prior work, they created a technology tool and game editing platform, the Wearable Learning Cloud Platform (WLCP), which enables teachers and students to play, create, and experience technology-augmented learning activities. This paper describes a 14-week Game Play and Design professional development program in which middle school teachers played, designed, tested, and implemented mathematics games in the classroom with their own students. Examples are included of teacher-created games, feedback from the students’ experience designing games, and evidence of student learning gains from playing teacher-created games. This work provides a pedagogical approach for educators and students that utilizes the benefits of mobile technologies and collaborative learning through games to develop students’ higher-level thinking in STEM classrooms. 

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5. Rainbow Agents: A Collaborative Game For Computational Literacy

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3341215.3356312  

   Pellicone, Anthony; Lyons, Leilah; Kumar, Vishesh; Zhang, Eda; Berland, Matthew (October 2019, CHI:PLAY '19)

   This paper describes the design of a collaborative game, called Rainbow Agents, that has been created to promote computational literacy through play. In Rainbow Agents, players engage directly with computational concepts by programming agents to plant and maintain a shared garden space. Rainbow Agents was designed to encourage collaborative play and shared sense-making from groups who are typically underrepresented in computer science. In this paper, we discuss how that design goal informed the mechanics of the game, and how each of those mechanics affords different goal alignments towards gameplay (e.g. competitive versus collaborative). We apply this framework using a case from an early implementation, describing how player goal alignments towards the game changed within the course of a single play session. We conclude by discussing avenues of future work as we begin data collection in two heavily diverse science museum locations. 

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