March 11, 2021
First Remote Playtest of WaterWays!
Last week we did our first remote playtest with a classroom of 5th grade English Language Learners at a public school in the Bronx. It was fascinating- the KS team was all remote, and the classroom had two teachers; one teacher was in person with about 6 students present and one teacher who was remote with 9 remote students.
We planned very carefully in advance to have our team members taking on different roles to ensure the process would go as smoothly as possible, and anticipated tech challenges with one team member whose role would be to share their screen with any students who couldn't access the site in a breakout room.
Overall, it went really well! We wanted to share a few highlights with you.
- 100% are interested in playing with WaterWays after today
- 100% say WaterWays helped them to see themselves as a scientist
- Ideas about scientists were clear and action-oriented!:
"I think scientist research and examine various aspects of the physical world in order to attain a better understanding of how things work and function."
"I think they some times tag some shark to see where the go in the year."
"scientist are finding a solution"
- For such a small sample, we see surprising gains in 3 items:
"I think I am good at learning science." Average responses increased by .38 of a point, to an average of 4 out of a 5-point scale
"I might like to be a scientist when I grow up." Average responses increased by .8 of a point, to an average of 4.3 out of 5.
"If I don't recycle, it doesn't affect the environment much." (Reverse scored): Average responses increased by 1.8 points, to an average of 3.7 out of 5.
This week, we are doing 4 more individual student playtests to focus on user interaction (students share their screen so we can see what they are clicking, and they think out loud so we know how they are processing), bringing our total up to 5 rounds of interviews/playtests; 3 rounds with students (8 individual students and one classroom of students) and 2 rounds with educators (8 individual educators).
Our team is looking forward to playtesting in person again in the future, but we are so excited to have these promising results to share!