GLS - games + learning + society

About GLS

Digital media are changing the way we think, learn, and interact - with important implications for our lives. Interactive media environments - or "video games" are at the forefront of this push toward an interactive and participatory culture. They let us relive historical eras, manage our favorite sports teams, or even lead organizations in virtual worlds consisting of hundreds of real people from around the world.

The Games, Learning, and Society group is a collection of academic researchers, interactive media (or game) developers, and government and industry leaders who investigate how this medium operates, how it can be used to transform how we learn, and what this means for society. As such we seek to understand what cognitive work goes into playing Zelda, World of Warcraft, or Civilization, how these design features might be leveraged to improve learning via the design of learning systems, and how organizations such as schools will need to respond.

Based in the Educational Communications and Technology Program in Curriculum & Instruction, we have a particular interest in how games can address three primary educational needs. Specifically helping students to:

Develop complex, academic language in and out of schools, something our current educational system fails to do for many students.
Think innovatively and creatively in science and technology.
Become "tech-savvy" consumers and producers of knowledge with technology.

GLS studies and builds learning systems - which we look at as social practices connected with technology. This ranges from designing curriculum around games like World of Warcraft to teach technology literacy practices, to designing interactive learning systems to teach high school biology. Our core competence is in understanding how games work, and how game mechanics might be used to produce learning - both in and out of schools. Across these projects our goals are not just to transmit content, but to enable learners to develop into competent, creative problem solvers who engage in meaningful social practices - and come to identify themselves as experts within a domain.