Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
(N/A)
COLUMBIA,MO 65211
Performing Department
Animal Sciences
Non Technical Summary
Effectively preparing students for careers in science requires they can take classroom knowledge and apply it in real-world situations. Providing such experiences in a classroom can be difficult however due to financial and time constraints as well as safety concerns. Animal genetics courses are no exception as illustrating long-term breeding concepts is not possible in the length of a semester. In fact, breeding cattle takes years--even breeding fruit flies would take longer than a semester. This challenge, motivated us to develop a cattle breeding simulation that would allow students to select and breed their own herd of cattle. Using CowGames students can see the results of their decisions immediately--something that takes years and years in real life. Students are then able to evaluate how their decisions affected their herd and consider what they might do differently. Furthermore, the simulation provides the opportunity for students to see how multiple traits or concepts relate at one time--something not possible with traditional paper and pencil methods. To ensure the simulation achieves these goals we have developed an evaluation to determine the effectiveness of CowGames regarding both learning gains and engagement. Following our evaluation, we will present our findings at animal science and education technology meetings. Our hope is that the implementation of CowGames will spark interest in the development of more interactive simulations in agriculture. The use of simulations is well accepted in medicine and other fields such as flight, but its adoption has been slow in other sectors, certainly agriculture. Simulations have the potential to expose people, even people from traditionally non-agriculture backgrounds, to the many different sectors of agriculture.
Animal Health Component
10%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
45%
Applied
10%
Developmental
45%
Goals / Objectives
The major goal of this project is to design, develop, implement, and release an effective, accessible, and engaging beef cattle breeding simulation which illustrates long term breeding principles for use in undergraduate education.To reach this goal we have laid out the following objectives:1)Game Design & Content- To determine the necessary content we conducted educator interviews to gain insight on what educators wanted in the simulation. After we determined necessary content we began the design process. Overall design goals were ease of use while accurately portraying current cattle breeding data representation schemes.2)Game Development- The game was developed on the Vue.js framework to increase development efficiency as well as streamline the program for updates and maintenance. The program is written in Javascript, Node.js, HTML, CSS, and SQL. It employs Sequelize, Bulma, and many other Javascript packages.3)Game Implementation- To deliver the best product, we opted to follow an agile release model. Following this model, the game was released iteratively then based upon feedback, modified and released to the next testing group. This allowed us to test for bugs while gaining a better understanding of what users expected from the simulation.4)Game Release (and Maintenance)- Game is released on a limited basis during effectiveness evaluation. Following the evaluation any updates and modifications will be implemented before the final game is available to all educators. Following release, the game will be maintained and updated as required. To ensure continued usability educators and students will be encouraged to provide suggestions and comments.5)Effectiveness and Engagement Evaluation- To evaluate the effectiveness of the game on educational gains we will test three different scaffolding methods and compare gains through quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods.6)Accessibility- To guarantee access to CowGames it was determined the best delivery method was a web application with user accounts which maintain player progress. This allows students to access CowGames anywhere with internet access and play any time they want. Furthermore, this model allows educators to employ CowGames at any time during their classes giving them increased ability to use it in their classrooms.
Project Methods
This project's methods fall into two categories--development and evaluation. The development portion of the project refers to the design and implementation of code. The evaluation portion refers to classroom testing and data analysis.To develop the most useful tool we felt it was imperative to get potential user feedback before we even began the design process. To achieve this, we interviewed over 40 animal breeding educators from across the United States. We asked about what they felt were required features, what content they would like to cover, and any other features they thought may be useful. After the interviews we evaluated the responses to determine what exactly we would include in the simulation. After making these initial design decisions we drew out exactly how the game would flow and a general appearance. Following this process, we began code implementation on the Vue.js framework. We also decided to use the Auth0 authorization service to increase user security. Once we had a basic version we began iterative testing with small classes at University of Missouri and Michigan State University. During these tests we asked students to report any technical issues as well as answer survey questions regarding usability. This allowed us to iteratively design a clean and responsive system. While conducting iterative testing we also began planning the effectiveness evaluation.To truly evaluate the effectiveness for learning gains and engagement we felt it was necessary to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The objective of our study is to determine which type of educational scaffolding is most effective for increasing learning gains. Students that agree to participate in the study will be asked to complete a prior-knowledge assessment, two scenarios in a module of CowGames (each student is assigned to one of three levels of scaffolding), a module reflection, a post-knowledge assessment, and a delayed post-knowledge assessment thirty days later. The data from the assessments will be evaluated using an ANCOVA comparing the three scaffolding levels adjusted for Prior-knowledge assessment performance. The module response questions will be evaluated with Chi squared analysis to evaluate categorical responses. This evaluation will allow us to determine which method of scaffolding is most beneficial to students so that it can be implemented in all modules.