Games+Learning+Society 10 Conference

Life is a journey:  game-infused learning progressions with real-world impact
Sasha Barab, Anna Arici, Adam Ingram-Goble, Brenden Sewell, Alan Gershenfeld

In this symposium, we will present data and insights from two of our student-facing games implemented with over 800 middle-schools students with low socio-economic status in a number of comparison studies. A core finding here was that having agency and consequentiality was a key learning value, and served to create a strong connection among player, content, and context. Further, we also learned that we had under-estimated the challenges of eco-system integration, and this finding prompted us to focus on supporting games for teachers, on developing a broader platform infrastructure, and putting more resources into the experience around the game. Further, as the largest public teacher certification program, we also focused on leveraging the same theory of change and infrastructure to build out game-infused professional development modules that will also be deconstructed as part of this symposium.