To position young learners for STEM careers requires a concerted effort between STEM advocates, researchers, educators, parents, and learners themselves. Moreover, understanding factors that impact persistence toward STEM careers for underrepresented minority (URM) students requires a nuanced understanding of how identity, exposure, and support interact to enable STEM interest and engagement. This article surmises that positioning URM learners for STEM success requires working collaboratively with stakeholders to develop purposeful reinforcements to the STEM Learning Ecosystem in both formal and informal capacities and then deploying those reinforcements at individual, community, and policy levels to reposition URM students for STEM success.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents a new digitized Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) tool and discusses the results of deploying it to minority students in at-risk schools. Pervasive science stereotypes, particularly stereotypes of scientists, continue to negatively affect minoritized students' perceptions of science and commitment to pursuing STEM-related careers. One helpful tool for better understanding students' perceptions of scientists through projective tests is Chambers's DAST, initially created in 1983. The original protocol for deploying the DAST in a research setting asked students to “draw a scientist” on paper. Then, researchers could assess the seven indicators of stereotypical scientists (i.e., eyeglasses, facial hair, white lab coats, symbols of knowledge, symbols of research, technology, and captions). However, to improve inter-rater reliability and capture a more accurate reflection of students' perceptions of scientists, Finson, Beaver, and Cramond reenvisioned DAST scoring and assessment in 1995 to include eight additional indicators (i.e., indicators of danger, indicators of secrecy, mythic figures, presence of light bulbs, sex indicator for male, Caucasian, middle-aged or elderly, and scientists working indoors). Finson and team called the new DAST scoring rubric the DAST-C, which remains the most widely used one. However, methodological issues still impact DAST assessments, and updated tools for technology have made paper/pencil tasks obsolete, even for young students. With support from the National Science Foundation's Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (NSF ITEST) program, our collaborative interdisciplinary team infused technology-rich STEM learning modules that incorporated a proof-of-concept digitized version of the DAST into at-risk 3 rd –5 th -grade classrooms serving minoritized students. We compared findings from the digitized DAST with a priori paper/pencil data to highlight critical differences in DAST implementation and scoring. The current study had two primary objectives related to updating the DAST as a tool and in terms of streamlining DAST scoring: 1) digitizing the DAST to bring the paper/pencil version into the 21st century and 2) streamlining DAST assessment by integrating digital assessment tools into the new digitized DAST tool. Here, we discuss digitizing the DAST tool, assessing indicators of stereotypical scientists, and deploying the digitized DAST to a population of minoritized students studying in at-risk schools in America.

While the motivational effect of educational gamification is largely recognized, the impact of the gamification element virtual currency (VC) is underexplored, especially in an educational setting. To address this gap, the goal of the presented multi-case empirical study was to systematically explore the impact of virtual currency on learners’ engagement, motivation, and academic performance across different contexts and to uncover potentially generalizable results. Accordingly, this paper presents the outcomes of a multi-perspective analysis of students’ experiences in out-of-class practicing in a learning environment gamified with VC and the effect of this game element. The work builds on previous case studies with analogical goals, which the authors have conducted in different contexts, including the university type, student population, subject area, etc. The provided comprehensive cross-case analysis integrates and extends the previous results tracing the path to generalizable knowledge about the potential of VC. While the results of this multi-case study demonstrate a significant increase in student engagement in out-of-class practicing gamified with virtual currency, they fail to show a significant increase in students’ intrinsic motivation and students’ final course grades. This study is a step forward in enhancing our understanding of the multifaceted effect of virtual currency on learners’ experience.

As a gamification element, virtual currency (VC) stands for rewards that can be exchanged for virtual or real goods. While some forms of reward-based gamification have been studied extensively, the exploration of the impact of VC on learners is relatively scarce. In particular, there is a lack of studies investigating its effects in different learning contexts. Since VC can evoke perception of benefits with positive impact on course outcomes, it may be experienced as an extrinsic incentive. On the other hand, VC can promote internalized motivation when awarded for accomplishment of certain challenges. To bridge this gap we are conducting a longitudinal study on the impact of VC on student motivation and engagement in different contexts and with different types of learners. The goal of this paper is to empirically investigate whether and how VC can improve the engagement in out-of-class practicing of a certain population of learners in a gamified Discrete Structures course. The study demonstrated a strong positive impact of VC on learners’ engagement however VC exhibited no significant impact on students’ academic performance and intrinsic motivation.

Effective gamification can only be based on understanding the relationship between learner motivation and the game elements which are used to gamify learning activities. Although frequently mentioned, Virtual Currency (VC) remains underused and scarcely studied in educational gamification. As a motivational affordance, VC can be thought of as supporting different types of motivation, but currently, there is a lack of empirical studies which investigate this. Recognizing this gap, the purpose of our study was to empirically investigate whether and how gamifying learning activities with virtual currency can engender motivation for out-of-class practicing and what type of motivation. In the limited research others have conducted, VC has been studied largely in combination with other game elements, which does not allow reaching reliable conclusions about the impact of the individual elements. For this reason, we studied the effects of VC in a gamified Discrete Math course isolated from other game elements. The study showed that using VC to gamify practicing increased students' practicing activity, which resulted in improved academic performance. The study also revealed that while gamified practicing did not increase students' intrinsic motivation, it supported internalization of motivation towards this learning activity.

There has been an increasing effort to make activities that are not inherently interesting for all learners more attractive through gamification. Although the research on the effectiveness of educational gamification has been growing, the effects of some gamification elements on learners' motivation and engagement are not well understood. In response to this gap, in this paper we describe an experience of gamifying out-of-class practicing with Virtual Currency (VC) in a Computer Networking course. The results of our study show that the VC-based gamification (without interactions with any other gamification elements) had a positive impact on student engagement compared to non-gamified online practicing. The learners' VC earning and spending behaviors indicate also that Virtual Currency brings additional objectives for students to strive for, besides grades.

This Full Paper in the Research-to-Practice track builds on research in gamification of instruction. A primary objective of gamifying learning is to encourage and sustain students' engagement in activities by making them more gamelike. However, it is still unclear what structures borrowed from games could afford such a “game-like” experience and in what contexts. Embedding classmates' duels in learning settings seems a promising gamification strategy for exploration due to its potential of increasing motivation and engagement through a “game-like” experience. Similar effects are expected from using virtual currency, another design element popular in video games. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to empirically investigate whether the incorporation of dueling leads to increased interest in out-of-class practicing. In addition, we were interested in investigating to what an extent adding virtual currency can boost students' interest in dueling. An introductory class in Python programming served as the experimental environment. Unlike most studies in which the control group works in a non-gamified condition and the experimental group works in a gamified condition, this experiment uses a different approach. We investigated the impact on learners' engagement of adding duels to an ongoing gamified activity. Engagement indicators were measured and logged throughout the semester while student motivation was examined through surveys. The opportunity to challenge classmates appeared after the first exam (around one-third of the semester) and continued for the remaining two thirds of the class time. Thus, the same students in the new condition served as the experimental group. After the third exam, we added virtual currency. Students were able to earn virtual currency by issuing and responding to duel requests as well as by doing extra practice. This had a noticeable effect on the use of dueling. The empirical results of the study show that overall, for this group of students, adding duels alone had no positive effect on students' engagement with the gamified practicing system. However, evidence from the survey suggests that the studied combination of gamification elements (points, badges, leaderboard, avatars, duels, and virtual currency) did increase student intrinsic motivation.

Gamification - using game mechanics for affording gameful experiences in non-game contexts - is getting increased attention in the educational field. However, its motivational mechanisms, intended to enhance student learning, are still not sufficiently understood. In this paper, we present an empirical study on the use of one of the most popular gamification elements, badges. The goal is to shed some light on their impact on student engagement and motivation. The study results suggest that while the badges improve student engagement and academic performance, they do not affect the student's intrinsic motivation. However, we speculate that they foster internalization of the learning-related extrinsic motivators? values, which results in increased engagement in the learning activities.

Gamification in education still lacks systematic studies assessing its impact on learning. This poster will present the design of our empirical studies on the effect of various combination of game elements on student motivation and engagement in CS courses.

Out-of-school suspension (OSS) disconnects students from accessing important school relationships and academic and social support. OSS contributes to a significant number of ethnic minority and economically disadvantaged students receiving short-term suspensions. Community-based organizations may step in as alternative spaces for short-term suspended students. This study investigates the effects of a community-based program on a sense of social connectedness among a sample of short-term suspended students; an increase in social connectedness aimed to predict improvements in student-teacher relationships and a reduction in further suspension. The findings suggest students demonstrating an increase in their sense of social connectedness had favorable teacher-student relationships and a lower probability of further suspension. Findings support the value of building partnerships between schools and community-based organizations to support short-term suspended students.