American students perform at a lower level and express less interest in STEM than students in other countries (Fayer et al., 2017). Additionally, Women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and people with disabilities are underrepresented as both students and professionals in STEM fields (Rotermund & Burke, 2021; Hamrick, 2021). To address the dire need to prepare students with key skills like communication and collaboration, and increase interest in health and medicine careers especially among BIPOC, Killer Snails, a science-focused educational technology company, will create VenomSquad, an augmented reality (AR) learning experience for 6-8th grade. We will foster an interest in STEM and future careers by creating an AR experience using mobile phones where students take on roles as scientists working collaboratively in teams to understand how venom can be used to make therapeutic drugs. VenomSquad will be a 5-day curriculum supplement that combines AR game play, an interactive web-based digital science journal that reflects student interactions, and an innovative assessment dashboard for educators which highlights student collaboration across platforms. In VenomSquad students will take on roles of scientists collaboratively solving a real-world problem: finding new, non-addictive pain therapies based on the venom of extreme creatures like snakes and cone snails. While the content we propose for VenomSquad is unique, the underlying technology and principles of multimedia design for learning are generalizable to other content areas. VenomSquad has three innovative features: (1)Technical advancements in collaborative mobile AR. The creation of VenomSquad will require new technical advancements (addressing bandwidth, latency, loss of connection) to ensure a high level of collaboration for the student teams using AR. (2)Multiplayer design engine. The proprietary design engine powering the digital science journal enables collaborative behaviors like communication and sharing resources between students with different information based on their roles, while maintaining common ground within the group. (3)Educator dashboard optimized for timely, contextual feedback. We will create an educator dashboard to display actionable learning analytics drawn from qualitative and quantitative information about individual student work and collaborative interactions between students in the digital science journal and the AR scenes. This display will highlight evidence of successful collaboration or the need for support from the educator. This feature of the dashboard will help educators assess each student and group’s AR and digital experience, addressing pain points for educators using collaborative activities in classroom settings. Taken together, these features ensure VenomSquad will be unlike existing Life/Physical Science materials on the market and will create a niche in which Killer Snails can grow. Our iterative approach to the design and testing of VenomSquad will examine how these features contribute to students’ learning experiences. Our evaluation partner WestEd will conduct an RCT examining the extent to which VenomSquad can affect students’ use of science and engineering practices, especially ability to effectively collaborate, and interest in STEM careers, and educators’ ability to monitor and support students during collaborative activities.

There is an urgent need for learning initiatives that make science both approachable and relevant to American middle school students. This SBIR FastTrack award will enable Killer Snails, LLC to develop and commercialize VenomSquad, an immersive learning experience that leverages mobile augmented reality to put students in the role of scientists collaborating to solve a real-world problem: finding new, non-addictive pain therapies based on the venom of extreme creatures like scorpions, snakes, and cone snails. VenomSquad engages students with authentic health and medicine content while offering educators assessment tools to enhance students’ use of science and engineering practices, STEM identity, and interest in future careers in science and medicine, and a roadmap of best practices for applying emerging technologies in science learning for educators.