About the Challenge

Teachers, coaches, and/or parents must register student teams through the RealWorld Registration. Then each team will design a team mission patch. This activity is an important first step in team building. The mission patch design should reflect the team's mission and strengths of each team member.

After completing the RealWorld challenge, student teams share their unique design elements and indicate their interest in being considered for the InWorld phase. Each team's mission patch, images, drawings and links to their online journal will all be shared through this website. The RealWorld part of the challenge must be completed by January 27, 2012.

College engineering students will then review each team's posts, and select 20 teams (10 teams for each challenge) to move InWorld. Once selected, the student teams will then be led by a college team leader for the InWorld portion of the challenge. Each InWorld team will be given a dedicated, virtual "Team World" to continue refining RealWorld designs. Teams should also be prepared to solve a Mystery Problem that will be posted during the challenge.

An evaluation team will narrow the field to the top three teams in each challenge category: R2 and JWST. The selections will be based on the best overall design solution, and the mystery problem. The selected teams will be required to provide tours through their Team Worlds and present “live” through a synchronous presentation to the evaluation team. After each team has presented, winners from each category will be announced.

Toolkit

RealWorld Resources

A complete set of student resources and a step-by-step educator/parent/coach guide is available to help participants through the engineering design process.

RealWorld Rubric: A rubric helps teachers/coaches/parents guide the development of the RealWorld design solution.

InWorld Resources:

Suggestions and advice are available to help College Team Leaders guide their teams through five tasks continuing the engineering design process in the virtual world setting.

InWorld Rubrics: Rubrics will be used to evaluate two tasks within the Team World space. The top three teams for each challenge, based on these rubrics, will be invited to participate in an Open House and Synchronous Presentation. A rubric will be used to score the Synchronous Presentations and identify the winning team for each challenge.

Online Tutorials:

Two sets of online tutorials are included. One explores the engineering design process in more detail. The second set focuses on navigating and building within NIA Universe.

Judging

InWorld work will be reviewed by Evaluation Teams comprised of engineering students, professors, NASA researchers, and NIA educators. Work will be evaluated three times during the challenge:

The first evaluation is formative, or “free advice.”
The second evaluation narrows the field to the top three teams for each challenge.
Results of the Synchronous Interview with the Evaluation Team will determine the winning team for each challenge.

Student Designs

These designs were submitted by students during the 2010-11 and 2011-2012 RealWorld Design Phase.

2011-12 Timeline

The 2011-12 timeline is divided into the RealWorld Design Phase and the Inworld Design Phase.

Please note a change in the dates to review the worlds. Worlds will be closed for review March 9 - March 15, 2012 (not March 2 - March 8 as listed on the Timeline below.)

NIA Universe

NIA Universe is built within Activeworlds, a 3-D multi-user PC-based system. You may visit NIA Universe as a tourist by copying and pasting the url below into the address window on any browser.

host.activeworlds.com/downloads/NIA/NIA1121.exe Tourists have limited rights building and chatting InWorld. Student teams selected to participate in the InWorld phase of RWIW will be given a TeamWorld and Citizen IDs.

Student/Team Leader Awards and Teacher/Parent/Coach Incentives

RealWorld

Students: Student members of each team that completes and uploads the RealWorld design solutions through the InWorld Registration will earn a certificate of completion.

Teachers/Parents/Coaches: For every student team registered from September through January, teacher/parent/coach names will be entered into monthly drawings for $100 gift certificates. After helping student teams upload the RealWorld design solutions through the InWorld Registration, teachers/parents/coaches will receive a certificate and letter of commendation.

InWorld

Students: Students on each team selected as a finalist (top 3 teams for each challenge) will earn a certificate of completion and letter of commendation. Each member of the winning team (one team per challenge) will earn $1,000.

College Team Leaders: Teachers/parents/coaches pass the team's leadership to college Team Leaders once InWorld work begins. College Team Leaders on each team selected as a finalist (top 3 teams for each challenge) will earn a certificate of completion and letter of commendation. The college Team Leader of the winning team (one team per challenge) will earn $1,000.

Past Winners

2010 – 2011 RWIW Winning Team: The Golden Arrow
Meet high school students Jill Freise, Matthew Roth, and Adrianna Cooke from Lutheran South Academy in Houston, TX and their college team leader, Nam Truong, from the University of Southern Florida, and peek inside their world.

Home | About | The Challenge | Past Winners