Mission Empower

Project Summary: Mission Empower: Health According to the Society of Public Health Education, only 7.5% of K-5 schools nationally provide sufficient health education (Society for Public Health Education, 2017). IDM and game-based learning strategies have the potential to help close this gap but, to date, most public health solutions have not been scalable (Zamboni, et al 2019). Too often IDM and health solutions are employed in ways that fail to provide teachers insight into resources or a coherent vision for how the products can be effectively used to advance student learning (Pan et al, 2021; Darling-Hammond and Zielezinski, 2014). The problem is particularly acute in elementary STEM and health education, and most accentuated among low-income students and students of color, in whom meaningful STEM and health education opportunities are negligible, thus hindering their STEM identity development (Martin-Hansen, 2018). Mission Empower.was developed to greatly reduce this STEM/health access gap. Thus, the present project was developed to provide a scalable public health solution for the 4th and 5th grade classroom. It pilots, tests and evaluates two hybrid, project-based learning modules that will enable 4th and 5th grade elementary teachers to embed public health topics in their core science curriculum and link the learning to the STEM standards the students must master. This project is significant because it will employ interactive digital media (IDM) and game-based learning practices to increase the adoption of public health curriculum by educators within their core science block. By using a project-based learning approach we will provide teachers a clear, adoptable framework that allows them to easily implement scalable public health information for students. The resulting prototypes will serve as the template for a year-long, standards-aligned, IDM curriculum in public health that will eventually include eight full projects, i.e., “Mission Empower.” This project is innovative in that it employs research on scaling public health curriculum with the best of IDM and game-based learning research within one easy to adopt framework of project-based learning. We will embed the best of game-based learning strategies and interactive games with-in a seamless, easy to use student experience that gives teachers choice over sequencing of learning and the tools needed to monitor student progress through badging and data. By leveraging technology to create a streamlined, simple solution, Mission Empower will ensure scalability and adoption by teachers, leading to increased student access to knowledge that will enhance their stem identities and, eventually, increase the number of students who pursue STEM and health careers. In this Phase I SBIR we will: 1) Develop one initial hybrid learning module prototype, 2) Employ focus groups and authentic user tests with 30 teachers, and 3) Create a second module informed by the first prototype.