92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 5:00 PM
Use of a NOAA 3-D Game to Evaluate Student Knowledge of Earth Science
Room 348/349 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Keith Schimmel, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Univ., Greensboro, NC; and E. Hackathorn and B. Lynge

The Interdisciplinary Scientific Environmental Technology Cooperative Science Center (ISETCSC) is a NOAA funded research and education center involving faculty and students from seven universities and nine STEM disciplines. An evaluation challenge for ISETCSC has been to determine student knowledge of NOAA science, structure, and career opportunities. Utilizing the game design capabilities of NOAA's Virtual Worlds Program at the Earth System Research Laboratory, a 3-D game has been designed and developed to determine its utility in evaluating student knowledge of NOAA and NOAA science.

The time-travel game includes environmental problems for the player to solve and showcases NOAA's technology and research. Emerging 3-D gaming environments have the potential to support evaluation activities that are self-directed and mediated in a social network context. This paper will demonstrate the game that has been developed along with preliminary data on how it has been used to evaluate student knowledge of NOAA science, structure, and career opportunities.

Supplementary URL: