Promoting Computational Thinking and STEM Attitudes for Individuals with Disabilities Using Game Builder Garage

It is essential to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion by making programs more accessible for individuals with disabilities to broaden the STEM enterprise and create a more inclusive workforce. Despite rising awareness of barriers in STEM for those with disabilities most efforts have centered on physical disabilities, often overlooking neurodiverse learners.

To address the issues of neurodiverse learners, this project leverages game development innovations to offer an engaging STEM curriculum tailored for individuals with disabilities through video game design. The focus is on designing a curriculum to support the development of computational thinking skills with middle-school students with disabilities to: (1) embed acquisition of computational concepts and practices within a highly engaging context; (2) complement the increasingly computational nature of STEM careers; and (3) lead to tangible representations of learning.

The design, development, implementation, and evaluation of an accessible video game design curriculum using Nintendo’s Game Builder Garage platform will be deployed in informal STEM environments to investigate how participation influences computational thinking skills and attitudes towards STEM for individuals with disabilities.

The aims of this project are to influence STEM perceptions and skills for individuals with disabilities in informal STEM learning settings. The target audience are middle school students with disabilities. This Integrating Research and Practice project will be guided by these research questions: 1) How can a curriculum be designed to support development of computational thinking for individuals with disabilities for deployment in informal STEM learning environments? 2) How do stakeholders (e.g., individuals with disabilities, caregivers, experts) perceive the accessibility and ease-of-use of the curriculum and game development tools, and what improvements are needed? 3) What is the influence of the Gaming for Good learning experience on participants’ perceptions towards STEM? 4) What is the influence of the Gaming for Good learning experience on participants’ computational thinking skills?

A mixed methods research design and an iterative learning experience design evaluation approach, which includes formative, summative, and remedial phases, will be employed in this project. As a result, this project will produce a co-designed inclusive digital game-based learning curriculum that addresses the following STEM topics: data, modeling & simulation, computational problem solving, and systems thinking.

The broader impact of this project is that by shifting from a programming to a data focus in game making, STEM careers like computer science, game design, and instructional design will be more accessible to individuals with disabilities.

This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.