Award Abstract # 1632539
SBIR Phase II: A Cloud-Based Tutoring Software For Teaching Coding to K-12 Students through Integration with Popular Video Games

NSF Org: TI
Translational Impacts
Recipient: THOUGHTSTEM, LLC
Initial Amendment Date: July 31, 2016
Latest Amendment Date: September 10, 2018
Award Number: 1632539
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Rajesh Mehta
rmehta@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2174
TI
 Translational Impacts
TIP
 Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships
Start Date: August 1, 2016
End Date: September 30, 2020 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $750,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $1,095,356.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2016 = $750,000.00
FY 2017 = $16,000.00

FY 2018 = $329,356.00
History of Investigator:
  • Stephen Foster (Principal Investigator)
    sfoster@olympic.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: ThoughtSTEM, LLC
2635 CAMINO DEL RIO S STE 103
SAN DIEGO
CA  US  92108-3727
(858)869-9430
Sponsor Congressional District: 50
Primary Place of Performance: ThoughtSTEM, LLC
5520 Ruffin Road Suite 201
San Diego
CA  US  92123-1320
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
51
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): TF7RPZQW7UX1
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): SBIR Phase II
Primary Program Source: 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 116E, 165E, 5373, 8031, 8032, 8039, 9180, 9231, 9251
Program Element Code(s): 537300
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.084

ABSTRACT

This Phase II project proposes to develop a computer science (CS) educational software that has the potential to inspire millions of U.S. K-12 students to learn computer programming. This software will leverage the motivational power of a popular video game, to teach CS to students by teaching them to reprogram the video game itself. The United States currently has a severe deficit of students pursuing CS. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that over 1 million computing job openings will go unfilled by U.S. workers by 2022. By leveraging the power of a popular video game, the technology proposed in this Phase II project has the potential to expose millions of K-12 students to coding in the next 5 years. The commercial impact of the underlying technology developed in this Phase II project does not stop at the over 100 million users who currently play the popular video game with which the current educational software integrates. Because the underlying technology is transferable to any moddable (i.e. reprogrammable) video game, the technology has the potential to be used to teach CS with other popular titles from the rapidly growing video game industry.

This Phase II project proposes to continue the development of a software product that is a web-based coding environment for novice programmers. This software goes beyond the state-of-the-art technologies in this space (i.e., scratch.mit.edu) in several ways: 1) It uses automated tutoring techniques to customize the educational experiences for novices, 2) it facilitates writing programs that manipulate objects and terrain in a 3D environment, 3) it allows the novice user to reprogram a popular video game, 4) it has an in-browser, WebGL-based 3D runtime environment, 5) it supports both a novice-friendly visual programming language (Blockly) as well as a text-based language (JavaScript), 6) it leverages gamification techniques such as badges, points, and unlockable items, and 7) it supports multi-user, collaborative coding. The objectives of this Phase II project concentrate on improving student experiences in order to increase customer retention and acquisition and to finish the development of a marketable product that will teach 5 million K-12 students in the next 5 years. The first objective of this project involves developing and extending the browser-embedded game engine. The second objective focuses on improving systems that match students with appropriate educational content and motivate students to continue learning. Finally, the third objective involves implementing new systems that incentivize students to create and share with the community.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The motivation for this Phase II award was to expand ThoughtSTEM’s existing product, LearnToMod, a Minecraft Modding software for teaching coding to K-12 students, beyond the game of Minecraft. ThoughtSTEM has since delivered significant advancements to LearnToMod’s ability to target non-Minecraft domains. Through this award, ThoughtSTEM has developed 18 new domain-specific languages (DSLs) which have been used to teach coding to tens of thousands of K-12 students through after-school programs, camps, workshops, and online classes. The development of so many DSLs, many of which are used by students to code 2D and 3D video games, was possible due to the development of better language design tools, which allow the integration of web interfaces as a first-class syntactic element within a program. Furthermore, the compiler technologies developed through this Phase II award now support a variety of new visual and textual surface syntaxes: Blockly, Litegraph (similar to Labview or Unreal Engine’s Blueprint language), Runes (an icon-based syntax we created), HTML5 widgets (programs “written” by interacting with web widgets, such as buttons, sliders, text boxes, etc.) and compositions of the above (in other words, a single program can be written partially in Blocky, partially in Litegraph, partially in text, etc.) Furthermore, through this award, ThoughtSTEM was able to integrate these SBIR technologies with the Unreal game engine, allowing for targeting of additional domains that may be of interest to K-12 students learning computer science.


Last Modified: 10/01/2020
Modified by: Stephen R Foster

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