Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

9.18.09 | It’s the classic kid classroom comeback: When am I ever going to need to use (fill in the blank here—algebra, persuasive writing, physics…) in my life?

Sasha Barab and his colleagues at Indiana University have found a way to combat that attitude. They have created a virtual world where middle school students can make a real difference—while learning about math, history, or ethics. Barab and his Quest Atlantis team might just be the “Sneaky Chef” of the classroom.

Quest Atlantis allows children to become environmental scientists or historians and explore various problems or quests. As they navigate the virtual world, they must make decisions and choices that affect how events unfold and how other characters will react. Rather than working on abstract problems in their textbooks, students experience the consequences of their choices.

The game “allows me to do something I couldn’t do as a 10-year-old” Barab says. That’s critical. “When a fifth grader acts as a scientist in a virtual world, she is learning not only scientific content, but also what it means to be a scientist in a situation in which that knowledge is useful.”

In many respects, this is what John Seeley Brown refers to when he talks about the difference between “learning about” and “learning to be.” Standing at the front of the room and telling students what they need to know can be very effective in communicating information about history or physics, but learning sticks and expands when kids can learn “to be” an historian or a scientist.

Barab calls it “transformational play.” The virtual world allows students to transform themselves from a passive recipient of information into an empowered player. They transform content from something to memorize into something to use to achieve a desired end. Most important, they see exactly how that algebra or history lesson comes in handy.

For more detail, see Barab’s recent article, Why Educators Should Care About Games (Education Leadership, 2009).

In a quest that explores why fish are dying in the virtual world Atlantis, a student may decide to outlaw logging in a nearby park or ban farming to stem chemical runoff, which alters the water’s pH level.  “They get to see the fish come back and hear people in the park say, ‘Wow, we have fish again,’” says Barab. But they also may get an earful from the local farmers or loggers as they go out of business.

“We have the opportunity as a design community and as schools to allow 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds to have agency. They can have consequentiality. They can have legitimacy. They can have intentionality,” he says. Adding to the impact, when the students complete a quest, other students in class or halfway around the world can comment on it.

“In a game, you can position content, person and context as interactive, living things. In schools, a person is an object to be changed, not a change agent. Content is something we can exchange for a grade, not apply to change something. Context is something in the future instead of a direct experience that is changing based on my actions.”

[listen to Barab talking about how games promote agency]

To Liesl S. Loudermilk, a teacher at University Elementary School in Bloomington, Indiana, the game really brings her teaching alive.

Her favorite program, Mesa Verde, lets players travel back in time 2,000 years to see how Native Americans lived. They have to haul water, make their own shoes, collect reeds and do the other work required to survive. Along the way, they meet a character. When they return 34 years later, she has died and the other characters are saying that she lived a long life—shocking to modern American students who think 34 is way too young to die and are likely to have moms who are 34 years old or older.

“I can tell them this stuff and it means nothing,” Loudermilk says.

The Origins of a Game

Quest Atlantis started as an educational game funded by the National Science Foundation to teach students about water quality issues. The idea for using an interactive game gelled after Barab watched kids absorbed with video games in a Boys and Girls Club.

“I had been thinking about what would engage kids to take up academic content and see it as their future,” he says. “I realized video games would be a place we could hook them.”

Today, the game has been played by more than 25,000 youth in eleven countries on five continents, who collaborate online. Researchers monitor 250,000 lines of chat daily, up from 200 four years ago. The quests now address seven social commitments—compassionate wisdom, creative expression, diversity affirmation, social responsibility, healthy communities, personal agency, and environmental awareness—along with helping students meet state learning standards for science, math and writing.

Documented Learning Gains

The game has led to higher test scores and increased engagement among students, 54 percent of whom say they play the game because they want to, not because it is a class requirement, Barab says. Researchers have recorded learning gains in science, language arts, and social studies. Teachers in grades 4-10 report their students are more engaged with the lessons when they use Quest Atlantis.

That so many students continue to play outside the classroom signals their interest, says Barab. They talk about their experience on the playground and they log in from home to continue playing.  That engagement is an important part of its success for her students, says Lucy Barrow, who provides professional development and classroom support for teachers in a private school in Victoria, Australia.

“One of her students” she said in an email, “said, ‘Quest Atlantis is good for having fun and for doing work. So it’s like playing and learning at the same time.’” With that attitude, learning is likely to stick and students are more likely to gain a love of learning that will ensure they are lifelong learners.

Educators can download a free sample unit of Quest Atlantis here: http://www.QuestAtlantis.org

Photo by: emjameson