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New Alliance To Research Gaming in Math and Science Education
10/7/2008
Video games have always had and probably will always have their detractors. But there's a growing movement in academia and industry recognizing the value of this medium as an educational tool both inside and outside the classroom. This week, eight colleges and universities added their inertia to this movement, joining with Microsoft to launch a new alliance to study the benefits of gaming for math and science instruction and STEM equity.
The consortium, dubbed the "Games for Learning Institute," is being led by New York University and includes Columbia University, City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Teachers College. These members are matching an investment from Microsoft Research of $1.5 million to provide a total of $3 million in funding for the effort.
This is not the first project to study the value of gaming in science and math education. In fact, just last month the United States Department of Education itself awarded a grant of $9.2 million to the Education Development Center, a non-profit education research organization, to study how video games can be used in middle school science instruction in the classroom. But the Games for Learning Institute is different from other recent research initiatives in that it's focused particularly on identifying which aspects of video games most engage students and on developing "relevant, personalized teaching strategies that can be applied to the learning process" based on the findings.
"While educational games are commonplace, little is known about how, why or even if they are effective," said John Nordlinger, senior research manager for Microsoft Research's gaming efforts, in a statement released Tuesday. "Microsoft Research, together with NYU and the consortium of academic partners, will address these questions from a multidisciplinary angle, exploring what makes certain games compelling and playable and what elements make them effective, providing critically important information to researchers, game developers and educators to support a new era of using games for educational purposes."
The research efforts of the consortium will focus on middle school STEM subjects and how video games might be used as learning tools. According to information released today, the research will involve a wide range of student populations but will pay particular attention to females and minority populations. DoE statistics and recent research show that
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