Children are easily captivated by action-packed video games. But what happens when educators harness that same technology for classroom learning? EDC researchers are on the leading edge of a movement to discover whether video games can reach children left uninspired by traditional classroom lessons.
EDC’s Center for Children and Technology (CCT) was recently named a National Research and Development Center on Instructional Technology by the U.S. Department of Education. It will bring together students, teachers, and game developers to design and evaluate digital games and learning tools, built around the Nintendo DS, for classroom science and literacy lessons. Over the course of five years, center staff will also research the effectiveness of the video games and share its development process with the broader gaming and education communities.
“We won’t disappear for five years and emerge with a suite of games,” says Shelley Pasnik, director of CCT. “We hope to build knowledge and contribute to the field by developing a greater understanding of how games can support learning in general.”
The center will develop year-long curricular supports for seventh-grade science students, with four game modules supplementing traditional instruction. Known as Super Sleuths, the curriculum will engage teachers and students in in-depth explorations of scientific problems, countering students’ scientific misconceptions, reading difficulties, and lack of motivation. Pasnik and her colleagues see educational potential in the experience of gaming as students test strategies, discover their mistakes and successes, and use that information to make progress.
On a mission to learn
Each game module will open with an animated video featuring a scientific challenge or investigation. For instance, Super Sleuths: Organisms and Ecosystems may begin with a dramatic rendition of a natural disaster. Players may be assigned to teams where they work on extended problem-solving games that call on and build their scientific knowledge.
In the process, student teams use the Nintendo DS as a combination portable lab, field notebook, scientific instrument, and communicator. The devices enable student groups to collect and analyze data as well as build hypotheses for solving problems posed by the unit. The games will supplement more traditional classroom learning materials. Many of the activities also build literacy skills. Mini-games support an array of language activities, such as discerning word meanings from the context of a passage and looking up words in easily available digital reference materials. “The real potential of this kind of game is not so much in delivering content and facts as permitting the kind of inquiry-driven investigations that are difficult to accomplish in real-life classrooms,” says EDC’s Cornelia Brunner, author of The New Media Literacy Handbook: An Educator’s Guide to Bringing New Media into the Classroom.
A powerful tool
To ensure the usefulness of the curriculum, classroom teachers will be involved in the development of the materials as well as the evaluation of their effectiveness. Center staff are also crafting a professional development program for participating teachers to ensure they can integrate the new materials into their classrooms. “This is not a standalone piece,” says Pasnik. “We see it as a powerful set of tools for teachers to engage students.”
Super Sleuths will undergo an extensive evaluation phase and be tested in a variety of diverse classroom settings to determine how successfully it builds student knowledge and skill as well as overcomes common scientific misconceptions. While the research focuses on seventh-grade students who are struggling academically, especially those in urban schools, the center staff anticipate that the games and supporting materials they produce will have broad application.
The research team plans to convene forums to share its development process and lessons learned with educators and game developers.
The center is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
Originally published on October 23, 2008