Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

9.23.09 | When people talk about video games and children’s health, it is often about how the former diminishes the latter.  But what if games could make a significant difference in the fight against childhood obesity, diabetes, asthma, or in cancer treatment?  Evidence is now mounting that digital games can make a positive difference in children’s lives.

Pioneers such as HopeLab and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have shown how health games can help transform behavior and promote healthier life outcomes. Most recently, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, in its latest report, Game Changer, cites the potential of games to leverage the strong links between children’s health and better learning outcomes. That is, games can help kids learn about healthy behaviors and when kids are healthier, they learn better in school.

The report, based on interviews with two dozen learning, health, policy, and games experts, provides a scan of current innovation in the fields of health and learning games. It offers a framework for using digital games to help children learn healthy behaviors; traditional skills such as reading and math; and twenty-first century skills such as critical thinking, global learning, and programming design. The report also argues that aspects of health-based games point to the potential of games in other domains of learning. The report calls for an approach that considers the whole child’s healthy development. 

Recommendations from the Report

Game Changer offers the following recommendations to accelerate innovation and bolster the use of games to address critical health and learning national priorities:

Implement R&D initiatives at federal and state levels
Games research need not mirror the disciplinary silos that exist in more mature fields.  Although content domains such as health have distinct research and design considerations, greater coordination and collaboration is needed to identify gaps and determine if and how practices might be transferred across domains.  Leadership from government, industry, education, health and philanthropy at the federal and state levels would build consensus around a national research and investment strategy to accelerate innovation in the field.

Create innovative partnerships
We need to establish innovative methods to fund and stimulate creative networks of partners with different areas of expertise.  This should not only be limited to game research and development, but should include marketing and distribution of games as well.  The federal government should provide incentives to create innovative partnerships.

Support adult guidance for children’s digital activities
Adult support provides the context, perspective, and encouragement that enhances children’s learning. Game-based learning efforts should consider the role of parents, educators, and mentors through outreach, professional development, and other training opportunities, such as a Digital Teacher Corps.

Modernize public media
With millions of dollars in public investment, public television has developed a strong track record of enhancing children’s learning of basic and more complex skills, especially those from underserved communities.  However, the television viewing experience has rapidly changed in the last decade, and these television-based efforts should be modernized to meet the needs of today’s digital natives.

Initiate a broad public dialogue about digital media and games
Although new genres are broadening public perceptions around games and their potential, the dialogue about children and games is still dominated by concerns about violence, sexual content, inappropriate language and safety.  We need to engage the public in a broader dialogue about the potential of digital media for children’s learning and healthy development through parent outreach, community gatherings, and expanded new media literacy curricula.

The report and its recommendations have received attention from the White House, Department of Education, and the video game industry. As Heather Chaplin pointed out in an earlier Spotlight post, games for social change are at a turning point. With a more coordinated, multidisciplinary, and strategic effort, games can become an agent of urgently needed innovation and change not only in children’s health, but in the current learning equation.

As reformers and policymakers know, there’s no penicillin for America’s education crisis.  Learning challenges can be addressed with creative research-based interventions, but the more typical approach in today’s schools is to standardize instruction and drive high stakes assessments to encourage skills mastery. Part of the promise of games for learning is how their unique features can offer players of all stripes engaging, tailored learning experiences if designed well and deployed wisely. 

The full Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health is available here.