# VenomSquad: Building skills and interest in STEM with collaborative augmented reality

> **NIH NIH R44** · KILLER SNAILS LLC · 2024 · $821,375

## Abstract

American students perform at a lower level and express less interest in STEM than students in other countries
(Fayer et al., 2017). Additionally, Women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and people with disabilities
are underrepresented as both students and professionals in STEM fields (Rotermund & Burke, 2021; Hamrick, 2021). To
address the dire need to prepare students with key skills like communication and collaboration, and increase interest in
health and medicine careers especially among BIPOC, Killer Snails, a science-focused educational technology company,
will create VenomSquad, an augmented reality (AR) learning experience for 6-8th grade.
 We will foster an interest in STEM and future careers by creating an AR experience using mobile phones
where students take on roles as scientists working collaboratively in teams to understand how venom can be used
to make therapeutic drugs. VenomSquad will be a 5-day curriculum supplement that combines AR game play, an
interactive web-based digital science journal that reflects student interactions, and an innovative assessment dashboard for
educators which highlights student collaboration across platforms. In VenomSquad students will take on roles of scientists
collaboratively solving a real-world problem: finding new, non-addictive pain therapies based on the venom of extreme
creatures like snakes and cone snails. While the content we propose for VenomSquad is unique, the underlying technology
and principles of multimedia design for learning are generalizable to other content areas.
 VenomSquad has three innovative features: (1)Technical advancements in collaborative mobile AR. The
creation of VenomSquad will require new technical advancements (addressing bandwidth, latency, loss of connection) to
ensure a high level of collaboration for the student teams using AR. (2)Multiplayer design engine. The proprietary design
engine powering the digital science journal enables collaborative behaviors like communication and sharing resources
between students with different information based on their roles, while maintaining common ground within the group.
(3)Educator dashboard optimized for timely, contextual feedback. We will create an educator dashboard to display
actionable learning analytics drawn from qualitative and quantitative information about individual student work and
collaborative interactions between students in the digital science journal and the AR scenes. This display will highlight
evidence of successful collaboration or the need for support from the educator. This feature of the dashboard will help
educators assess each student and group’s AR and digital experience, addressing pain points for educators using
collaborative activities in classroom settings. Taken together, these features ensure VenomSquad will be unlike existing
Life/Physical Science materials on the market and will create a niche in which Killer Snails can grow.
 Our iterative approach to the design and testin...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10756575
- **Project number:** 5R44GM146490-03
- **Recipient organization:** KILLER SNAILS LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Jessica Ochoa Hendrix
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $821,375
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10756575

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10756575, VenomSquad: Building skills and interest in STEM with collaborative augmented reality (5R44GM146490-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10756575. Licensed CC0.

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