Congratulations to Kalem Schrock, who presented his work on the Sociality Game at the recent National Diversity in STEM conference in Puerto Rico! Kalem was an REU student in my lab this summer and did a great job on a fun interdisciplinary project where we are developing an online multiplayer game to better teach students about data science. We use animal sociality as the “hook” to increase student engagement, and build the games around charismatic species like vampire bats.
The “Sociality Game”: a new method to teach biology students data science skills
Kalem Schrock, Joshua Garland, Gerald Carter, Elizabeth Hobson
Abstract
Data science skills are important for undergrads to learn but integrating them into biology courses can be difficult. We developed the “Sociality Game” – an engaging multiplayer game that combines animal behavior topics with data science training. Using game logic inspired by slither.io, we created a flexible Node.js-based platform which runs on the browser window. Players are assigned an avatar with a unique id and spawn point at the start of a game. We use the WebSocket package to dynamically update player locations as they move around the virtual environment. To guide their movements, players are given “missions” inspired by animal behavior topics. For example, each player might portray a vampire bat that forages for cow blood, where students play two iterations of the game: 1) their only goal is to find food, and 2) they need to socially forage by moving around with a buddy. We added food sources (cows) to the game landscape for players, where they earn points from finding and eating the blood of a cow. On the server, we record all the locations and scores of all players as they play the game, then compile the data so students can download the data. Students then use our tutorials to analyze their data and build data science skills. This allows students to connect with the data and build hypotheses on their interactions. As of now, we have a working prototype in beta testing, and we plan to make it widely available for educational purposes.
Find out more
Please visit this link for more information on the Sociality Game.
Help test the game!
We are currently in testing phase for the game! We’ve got a few more issues to work out still, but will hopefully be testing the game more widely soon. If you are interested in helping test out the game, please fill out your information here.
