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Success Story out of the ED/IES SBIR Program: Electric Funstuff: Mission US: An Interactive Solution for Middle School History Learning

Screen shot of Electric Funstuff products

Project Title: Mission US: An Interactive Solution for Middle School History Learning

Related ED/IES SBIR Awards:
Electric Funstuff, 2013 Phase I & II ($1,050,000)

Key Information:
Location: New York, NY
Website: https://www.electricfunstuff.com/
Demo: https://www.electricfunstuff.com/missionus
Contact: David Langendoen, david@electricfunstuff.com

Product
Up From the Dust is a web-based role-playing game that immerses 5th through 9th grade students in the history of the Great Depression. On a desktop or tablet computer, students play the game in the role of Dunn twins, 14-year-old Frank and Ginny, whose family farm in Texas is engulfed by the Dust Bowl and the onset of Great Depression. The game provides players an experiential understanding of the hardships that beset Americans in the 1930s and their strategies for survival, as individuals and as a nation. Features of the game include story-based immersive narrative missions where student's decisions continually drive the action, tips and hints for students who are struggling in the game, writing tools, and interactive maps. The game can be integrated within a course or used as a supplement. A teacher dashboard facilitates the use of the game (as well as other Missions developed previously) within classroom settings. Up from the Dust is developed to be playable on tablets in addition to web streaming.

Research and Development
Game design and development occurred across two phases: pre-production and production. During pre-production the team surveyed teachers about concepts that align to learning goals and common misconceptions in order to share the narrative arc of the storyline and the kinds of decisions that the player has to make. During production the team used an iterative process with formative research around the design and usability of the custom interactions that are part of each game, including testing engagement.

Once development was complete, the team performed a pilot study in three New York City public socioeconomically diverse schools in six middle school classrooms. Half of the classrooms integrated gameplay within a seven class long module on the great depression and half continued with business as usual methods. The sample included a total of 146 students (69 in the treatment and 77 in the control). Three teachers participated in the study, each teacher was randomly assigned to integrate gameplay in one of the two classes. Results indicated that the teachers reported that Up from the Dust was "easy" or "very easy" to use as part of their classroom teaching and that 77% of students reported being highly engaged. On a standardized measure of student content knowledge on the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, students in the treatment classrooms increased 15 percent points from pre-test to post-test, a significant increase (p<.05) compared to the control group who increased 1 percentage point.

Path to Commercialization
Up from the Dust has been played over 500,000 plays from web streaming on the Mission US website and on BrainPOP (a distribution partner) as well as through the tablet-based app on on-line stores. The Mission US website has over 50,000 registered teachers. Mission US has received additional funding to make the sixth and seventh missions from National Park Service and NEH respectively, along with matching funds from foundations and individuals. Electric Funstuff has also been able to rebuild the game engine in Unity and re-make the first mission with support from National Endowment for the Humanities. This engine includes new accessibility features, such as text to speech for all non-voiced text. These features will further expand reach and usage.

Awards & Nominations: