Dr. Shute receives $4M to further STEM learning research

Dr. Valerie Shute has received three grants within the past year to further her research aimed at making STEM learning more accessible, engaging and effective for students, especially underrepresented minorities. The National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences awarded a total of $4 million to her, to study the design, development and evaluation of immersive games to support physics competencies over the next four years.

The National Science Foundation awarded Shute a three-year, $1.1 million Cyberlearning Development Grant in September 2016. This grant builds on Shute’s prior research that used stealth assessment, or the embedding of evaluations deeply within games, to measure students’ understanding of physics competencies.

The second award from the National Science Foundation is a three-year, $1.5 million Education and Human Resources grant to study how interpersonal interactions influence collaborative problem solving processes and outcomes in digital STEM learning environments.

In August, the Institute of Education Sciences will award Shute a four-year, $1.4 million grant to study theoretically guided learning supports that can improve both the learning experience and learning outcomes in STEM learning games.

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