1. Statement of Problem1.1 What is this project about?The project is about designing modular, self-contained, easily accessible, multi-player interactive online learning environments called STRuctured-scenario ONline Games (STRONG) using the games unique features that help direct, facilitate, and assess middle-school students learning of specific domain knowledge and concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These online games use challenging scenarios to not only engage middle-school students but also provide them control over their learning environment. 2. Progress made since the first progress reportSince our first progress report we have come up with two relatively well implemented prototypes of strong. One of which being created in Visual Studio lets you use interactive buttons to "ask" for questions at random so that when it is developed with chat functionality, the kids will have random questions and won't be able to share their answers with others through the chat interface. We are at the current time only able to use gifs and jpgs in the scenario / action space of the program but are currently researching ways to integrate flash scenarios into Visual Studio programs (as we've heard it is indeed possible). There is also a reflection space where (for the current time) it can explain to students the scenario since we can't visually show them using flash. (We still have a picture, just no animation.) This reflection space also gives the users feed back when answering questions and can and will be able to give the kids links to certain websites that might be able to help them better understand the question or a concept involved in the question. Hopefully by the end of the week we will have a text box that contains the user's score based on their answering of the question correctly and their certainty of their answer. This certainty is obtained by radio buttons ranging from 1 to 5 with one being "I'm guessing" and 5 being "I'm positive". The other prototype we have created... Hopefully through our research on GUI's and programs used in education we will be able to choose which one of these prototypes best will better help students to learn to their maximum potential. 3. Addressing issues brought up by Gerhard3.1 Which games will we support?The STRONG interface, in future implementations, will support and facilitate many different interactive scenarios and learning environments for children. As a proof of concept, the current STRONG interface will support a scenario where children are to figure out how a basic circuit works by trying different combinations of a limited number of tools. All the scenarios will use some sort of science concept (electricity, motion, sound, gravity, etc.). For this specific scenario, the game players will be lost in a dark cave and have to get light in order to find their way out. STRONG will be dynamic enough that scenarios can be created and implemented fairly easily. For examples of the different games STRONG would take advantage of, visit here. 3.2 How this environment is related to "How the West was Won" How the West was Won is a fairly simple system where the designers tried to use the popularity of an existing "game" to teach arithmetic operations. STRONG, however, is more open ended, richer, and assessment-driven software under development. In some respects it resembles Quest Atlantis and we will compare STRONG with typical game design principles, How the West was Won, and Quest Atlantis in our final presentation. 3.3 A little more on STOP –> REFLECT –> THINK –> ACT STRONG scenarios and challenges promote a deliberate STOP –> REFLECT –> THINK –> ACT approach to rekindle players' intentionality and inherent preference for goal-oriented actions. Besides, as Balasubramanian [2003] discussed, such deliberate thinking fosters self-organized learning. Schön [1983] remarked that such “reflection-in-action” situations also fosters new ways of thinking and coping with surprises. The engaging scenarios in STRONG unfold as cliff-hanger chain of events to captivate students attention, rekindle their motivation, and provide meaningful contexts for learning. For instance, the dialogue between Peggy and Cassandra (fictitious names for students’ online avatars in the prototype) in our STRONG prototype under development, sets the tone for students finding compelling reasons to design a warning device after they have suddenly fallen into a dark cave during a hiking adventure. Please visit our prototype in development to "see and hear" a typical scenario. Then a           
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