Developing Lafayette Park Minecraft World to Broaden Participation in Computing

Lily Rui Liang; Rui Kang; Carlos Sac Mendoza

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Spotlight on Diverse Learners
Tagged Division: Computers in Education Division (COED)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47169

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Paper Authors

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Lily Rui Liang University of the District of Columbia

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Dr. Lily Rui Liang is a full professor and Graduate Program Director at the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of the District of Columbia. Dr. Liang joined the University of the District of Columbia in 2004 after receiving her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada. Her research areas include computer science education, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and digital image processing. She has mentored dozens of graduate and undergraduate students in research and K-12 outreach activities and is the Director of the Excellence in Computing and Information Technology Education (ExCITE) program. She is a fellow of the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership Program (CASL) and the Opportunities for Under-Represented Scholars (OURS) post-graduate institutional leadership certificate program and an alumna of the Frontiers of Engineering Education program (FOEE) of the National Academy of Engineering. She has been serving on the Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) Capital Area Regional Network steering committee since 2016.

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Rui Kang

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Rui Kang is Professor of Secondary Education (6-12) of Georgia College & State University (GCSU). She teaches graduate courses in numerous areas, including math pedagogy, assessment, educational research, and learner development. She holds two Ph.D. degrees, in Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University (2007) and in Mathematics Education from the University of Georgia (2022). Her scholarship focuses on mathematics teaching and learning, STEM education, and teacher preparation and professional development. Her 20+ publications include articles that appear in journals such as International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, Journal of Social Studies Research, School Science and Mathematics, and Mathematics Teacher. She served as the Program Chair of the Special Interest Group (SIG) Democratic Citizenship in Education of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) from 2016 to 2018. She has taught high school mathematics and holds a clear renewable teaching certificate in mathematics in the state of Georgia. She currently serves as a Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) of a National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM grant.

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Carlos Sac Mendoza University of the District of Columbia

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Abstract

Minecraft is a unique educational game, and researchers and educators have considered it potentially transformative for fostering learning and cognitive skills [1]. Since an early version of the game in 2009, millions of children worldwide have spent hundreds of thousands of cumulative years playing [2]. Gameplay can increase students’ motivation and engagement in learning, help them develop problem-solving skills, and provide unique opportunities for collaboration and leadership[1].

In this project, we developed the Lafayette Park World, a Minecraft Education game and programming environment, for youth to learn programming in a socio-cultural context. It mimics the real-world Lafayette Park, a historical site of the Women’s suffrage movement and a symbol of exercising First Amendment rights. In January and February 1917, women suffragists marched, every day, across Lafayette Park with their banners to take up positions in front of the White House to demand that President Woodrow Wilson help them in their campaign to get all American women voting rights [3]. The Lafayette Park Minecraft World integrates history, citizenship education, and computer science. It lets learners explore the Park virtually, compete to discover women’s suffrage protest signs and build architectures by programming on the Minecraft Education platform. We created it to teach computer programming through architecture design and construction while educating students about the women’s suffrage movement to increase awareness of gender equity and encourage civic engagement. Programming in this environment can be done either with blocks or in Python. We chose to use Minecraft as the platform for developing this socio-cultural computing game because:

1) It is one of the most popular game platforms for children aged 6-14 [2]. 2) It allows us to create a virtual world that reflects reality: the players’ identities and the event’s socio-cultural context. 3) Its education version allows players to program with blocks or in Python within its virtual worlds.

Faculty and students of the Excellence in Computing Innovation and Education (ExCITE) team designed the Lafayette Park World together, and one of the students implemented it. We developed the following components of it:

1) A virtual landscape mimicking the Lafayette Park, the White House, and their surroundings, with characters representing the women suffragists. 2) A game in which players can compete to discover women’s suffrage protest signs scattered around the landscape. 3) An area in the landscape for users to construct architectures by compiling example source code or developing their own code.

We invited high school students to play the game and refined it according to their feedback. We also developed the following supporting materials: 1) A lesson plan for using it in K-12 classrooms or higher education outreach activities. 2) Source code for creating architecture examples in the Lafayette Park World. 3) Video clips on how to play the game and how to use the examples’ source code.

We plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the Lafayette Park World in engaging K-12 students and increasing their interest in computing by offering workshops and collecting feedback by the time of draft paper submission. We will also use their feedback to further refine the Lafayette Park World, add more navigation instructions, and develop more coding examples.

Citation
Format

Liang, L. R., & Kang, R., & Sac Mendoza, C. (2024, June), Developing Lafayette Park Minecraft World to Broaden Participation in Computing Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47169

TY - CPAPER
AB - Minecraft is a unique educational game, and researchers and educators have considered it potentially transformative for fostering learning and cognitive skills [1]. Since an early version of the game in 2009, millions of children worldwide have spent hundreds of thousands of cumulative years playing [2]. Gameplay can increase students’ motivation and engagement in learning, help them develop problem-solving skills, and provide unique opportunities for collaboration and leadership[1].

In this project, we developed the Lafayette Park World, a Minecraft Education game and programming environment, for youth to learn programming in a socio-cultural context. It mimics the real-world Lafayette Park, a historical site of the Women’s suffrage movement and a symbol of exercising First Amendment rights. In January and February 1917, women suffragists marched, every day, across Lafayette Park with their banners to take up positions in front of the White House to demand that President Woodrow Wilson help them in their campaign to get all American women voting rights [3]. The Lafayette Park Minecraft World integrates history, citizenship education, and computer science. It lets learners explore the Park virtually, compete to discover women’s suffrage protest signs and build architectures by programming on the Minecraft Education platform. We created it to teach computer programming through architecture design and construction while educating students about the women’s suffrage movement to increase awareness of gender equity and encourage civic engagement. Programming in this environment can be done either with blocks or in Python.

We chose to use Minecraft as the platform for developing this socio-cultural computing game because:

1) It is one of the most popular game platforms for children aged 6-14 [2].
2) It allows us to create a virtual world that reflects reality: the players’ identities and the event’s socio-cultural context.
3) Its education version allows players to program with blocks or in Python within its virtual worlds.

Faculty and students of the Excellence in Computing Innovation and Education (ExCITE) team designed the Lafayette Park World together, and one of the students implemented it. We developed the following components of it:

1) A virtual landscape mimicking the Lafayette Park, the White House, and their surroundings, with characters representing the women suffragists.
2) A game in which players can compete to discover women’s suffrage protest signs scattered around the landscape.
3) An area in the landscape for users to construct architectures by compiling example source code or developing their own code.

We invited high school students to play the game and refined it according to their feedback. We also developed the following supporting materials:
1) A lesson plan for using it in K-12 classrooms or higher education outreach activities.
2) Source code for creating architecture examples in the Lafayette Park World.
3) Video clips on how to play the game and how to use the examples’ source code.

We plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the Lafayette Park World in engaging K-12 students and increasing their interest in computing by offering workshops and collecting feedback by the time of draft paper submission. We will also use their feedback to further refine the Lafayette Park World, add more navigation instructions, and develop more coding examples.

AU - Lily Rui Liang
AU - Rui Kang
AU - Carlos Sac Mendoza
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Developing Lafayette Park Minecraft World to Broaden Participation in Computing
UR - https://peer.asee.org/47169
ER -