Health Quest: Engaging Adolescents in Health Careers with Technology-rich Personalized Learning

Project Description

The goal of this project is to create Health Quest, an immersive career adventure game that deeply engages adolescents’ interest in health science careers. Health Quest will leverage significant advances in personalized learning technologies to create online interactions that enable adolescents to virtually explore health research careers in action. The project will investigate the impact of Health Quest on adolescents’ knowledge of, interest in, and self-efficacy to pursue health science careers and examine the effect of Health Quest on diverse adolescents by gender and racial/ethnicity.

Abstract

Engaging adolescents’ interest in pursuing careers in health science and the health professions offerssignificant promise for building our nation’s healthcare and health research capacity. The goal of this project is to create Health Quest, an intelligent game-based learning environment that increases adolescents’ knowledge of, interest in, and self-efficacy to pursue health science careers. Three specific aims will be accomplished by the project:

Aim 1. Design and develop Health Quest to engage adolescents’ interest in the health sciences utilizing personalized learning technologies that integrate the following components: (a) the Health Quest Career Adventure Game, an intelligent game-based learning environment that leverages AI technologies to create personalized health career adventures; (b) the Health Quest Student Discovery website, which will feature interactive video interviews with health professionals about their biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers; and (c) the Health Quest Teacher Resource Center website, which will provide online professional development materials and in-class support for teachers’ classroom implementation of Health Quest.

Aim 2. Investigate the impact of Health Quest on adolescents’ (1) knowledge of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers; (2) interest in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers; and (3) self- efficacy for pursuing biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers by conducting a matched comparison study in middle school classes.

Aim 3. Examine the effect of Health Quest on diverse adolescents by gender and racial/ethnicity. Working closely with underrepresented minorities throughout all design and development phases of the project, the project team will specifically design Health Quest to develop girls’ and members of underrepresented groups’ knowledge of, interest in, and self-efficacy to pursue health science careers.