Play the The STEM Career Paths Game now!

About the Game

Take on the role of a new high school student who interacts with a cast of characters, including classmates and teachers. What happens to your character after high school is up to you: Every choice impacts the future!

The STEM Career Paths Game is a character-driven game designed for middle-school and early high-school players. It can be played alone or with friends.

Plays in the browser on any device—tablet, phone, laptop, or desktop.

For Teachers

There are many ways to use The STEM Career Paths Game!

• Students can play it as a single-player game on their own
• Students can play in small groups, discussing their goals and making decisions together
• You can play it as part of a larger lesson on STEM careers

The game is played entirely in the browser. Make sure your IT system has whitelisted the game's domain so that it will load on your school's network.

Learning Objectives

Playing this game will help a player:

• Identify representative high school activities that incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics
• Describe how dispositions (such as engagement, resilience, or curiosity) contribute to one's getting into a STEM field in college
• Explain how outcomes after high school can relate to choices made in high school
• Describe one or more paths that someone can take after high school toward a STEM career, including higher education opportunities such as community college, liberal arts colleges, and state colleges

FAQ

How can a teacher incorporate this into a lesson on STEM?

Our team developed a workshop format that will be published soon. The activity has three parts. First, we ask the students to talk about STEM, including what it is and what it means. Then, we have them play the game in small groups. Finally, we have the groups discuss how and why they made their decisions while playing the game. If there is time, we add a fourth component: we ask the students to imagine the cast of the game and then write new stories that would fit into the game's format.

How can I put my own stories into the game?

Our game is open source! You can download the complete source code to the game from GitHub. Adding new stories requires a little bit of programming knowledge, but you can get started by looking at the files in the stories/starting_stories folder. If you simply copy one of those and tweak it, you should see the story show up in your local game. Because our game is free software, you can make any changes you want and release your own version, as long as your own version remains free. See the license for complete legal details.

Awards and Recognitions

Best Digital Game at Meaningful Play 2024

Credits

The game was developed by an undergraduate research team led by Paul Gestwicki, Professor of Computer Science at Ball State University. The student team included Jeffrey Harmon, Samantha Shively, and Brooke Wright with additional contributions from Lillian Waterman and Liam Grube. This work was funded by a grant from the Indiana Space Grant Consortium.

Legal

The STEM Career Paths Game is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. You can find the source code at https://github.com/stem-career-paths/game.

The STEM Career Paths Game Info Site by Paul Gestwicki is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0