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

Thoughtstem, Llc, San Diego CA

Investigators

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.