Gaming and interactive entertainment enjoy enormous potential for learning applications -- and now The School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California is looking at how a new game might actually help students gain access to education itself, by helping with the challenging college application process.
USC and its interactive media division play a key role in the incubation and genesis of new game design solutions -- Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen are just a couple notables to emerge from the program, and Naughty Dog veteran Richard Lemarchand joined the program as a teacher earlier this year.
Through a collaboration between USC's Pullias Center for Higher Education, directed by William G. Tierney, and the Tracy Fullerton-led USC's Game Innovation Lab, the university has developed a Facebook title called Mission: Admission, designed to improve low-income students' access to information and support in pursuing higher education and navigating the admissions process.
"Through game-based approaches, we hoped to meet kids where they are (online and playing games) and provide practitioners with a scalable, engaging college access tool," explains assistant research professor Zoe Corwin.
The project began with seed funding from USC's Office of the Provost, and the collaboration also includes local high school students who contributed to the concept and shape of the game itself.
Corwin says generally the most challenging element of the college applications process for high school students is that it's "passive and information-heavy", frequently leading higher education hopefuls through minefields of paperwork and requirements lists and confusing deadlines. USC aimed to create a game that would use natural skills associated with gaming to help those who generally don't have access to support in this process manage it better.
"The game cultivates in players an understanding of the importance of managing time well, paying attention to deadlines, and balancing academics and extracurricular activities," says Corwin of the game's aim. "Players learn information as well - such as the concept that different colleges have different application requirements, but more importantly, they learn and practice strategies that empower them to take parallel actions in real life."
Using a game to support students came naturally: the Mission: Admission team saw the process of application as being similar to a game inherently: "There are rules that must be followed and ramifications for straying from those rules," says Corwin.
"Unlike a game, the college application process has critical ramifications. If a student misses a key deadline, she might not be able to apply to a specific school or for financial aid," she says. "The game provides a safe place for students to fail."
"They then try out new strategies and master a skill. For example, if they miss applying to the FAFSA (application for federal aid) in the game, they most likely won't be able to afford college," Corwin continues. "So the next time they play, they adjust their strategy and apply early."
Corwin was one of a team of researchers that oversaw the research aspects, while the game design was led by the USC Game Innovation Lab's lead designers Tracy Fullerton, Elizabeth Swensen and Sean Bouchard. Students were recruited to provide input in the game's early phases, and to participate extensively in the testing.
In its earliest incarnation, Mission: Admission was prototyped through a physical card game, and iterations like application crunch emerged throughout the considerable four-year development process.
The game casts players in the role of a student who wants to go to college, working on the application process in realtime over the course of a week: "This mechanism was designed to foster in players the strategy of returning to a calendar and managing time and deadlines," Corwin says.
Players manage energy resources against requirements for the deadlines they've chosen: Options include studying, extracurricular activities, essay-writing and leveraging social networks for support and advice. The avatar-based system allows advanced players to earn badges that demonstrate their character traits or areas they've mastered.
A "pride" system allows them to allocate resources toward the nurturance of their own school and community: "These improvements stay with players as they move on to subsequent games, and reflect a desire of the student junior game designers to return to their communities after college and give back," according to Corwin.
The team's been playing the game with three Los Angeles schools that teach low-income students, where studies are underway to measure the impact of the game when it comes to its actual success. Preliminary research seems to show that while one playthrough seems to have on average a minimal impact, college-going efficacy begins to increase exponentially through subsequent playthroughs, says Corwin.
In the team's view, this result so far is consistent with a major principle of game design, where learning occurs after successive attempts and failures on a course to attain mastery. Thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the USC team will continue to experiment with other games oriented around connecting young people to passions, career goals and the mastery of the process that can help them attain it.
We're talking about adult people having to play a game because reading and filling up a form is too daunting. I understand awarding kids in elementary schools with badges for doing things, but we're talking about adults seeking higher education! A degree means nothing already, there's no need to make things worse.
As much as I would like to agree with you, I can't.
I grew up in medium-high income level living standard--suburban US. As many resources as we had, I don't think I would have made it into school or even thought about it if it wasn't for my parents. I knew I should go to college, but didn't know even where to start. If it wasn't for the support system I had through family, I wouldn't be where I am today.
I can only imagine that many of these kids don't even know where to start, and even if they did, thinking about the applications, the loans, the right school, etc would be incredibly daunting on their own. I would have loved something like this going through that process.
I think this game is a great idea. It's not *replacing* the actual application process-- it's just providing a means for high school students to understand it.
There's more to applying to colleges than just filling out forms, which you'll have your whole adult life to do. For most teens, it's the first major adult decision they make and bear the brunt of it for weal or woe. For those who are the first to college in their families and/or don't have much help from their schools, a tool like this could be invaluable.
This is not gamification as far as I can tell from the article's description of the game. Students are not playing this game as a way to apply to college or for financial assistance. Rather the game is designed to teach skills and strategies for successfully going through the real application process.
So this is not some gamified TurboTax for college admissions.
Sir, are you suggesting that the OP, Maciej Bacal, should read the article before posting an invalid criticism based an emotional trigger that signified to Mr. Bacal that he should, nay must, release his wisdom unto our desultory persons?
How dare you! We cannot lose sight of the repercussions of striving to educate youth about how to further their education.
I love stuff like this. Lots of education software in the past has been terrible and boring, but games are naturally teaching tools and there are all sorts of places where we can take advantage of their power to help people learn. In a lot of cases we don't even need "educational" games to do this; even just playing a bunch of RTS games will help you get better at arithmetic, for example.
Adam- couldn't have said it better myself. I can't even begin to get into how much Sierra games strengthened my vocabulary as a child. Dungeon Master also helped me learn resource allocation (one of the building blocks of economics) at 9.
I grew up in medium-high income level living standard--suburban US. As many resources as we had, I don't think I would have made it into school or even thought about it if it wasn't for my parents. I knew I should go to college, but didn't know even where to start. If it wasn't for the support system I had through family, I wouldn't be where I am today.
I can only imagine that many of these kids don't even know where to start, and even if they did, thinking about the applications, the loans, the right school, etc would be incredibly daunting on their own. I would have loved something like this going through that process.
There's more to applying to colleges than just filling out forms, which you'll have your whole adult life to do. For most teens, it's the first major adult decision they make and bear the brunt of it for weal or woe. For those who are the first to college in their families and/or don't have much help from their schools, a tool like this could be invaluable.
This is not gamification as far as I can tell from the article's description of the game. Students are not playing this game as a way to apply to college or for financial assistance. Rather the game is designed to teach skills and strategies for successfully going through the real application process.
So this is not some gamified TurboTax for college admissions.
Sir, are you suggesting that the OP, Maciej Bacal, should read the article before posting an invalid criticism based an emotional trigger that signified to Mr. Bacal that he should, nay must, release his wisdom unto our desultory persons?
How dare you! We cannot lose sight of the repercussions of striving to educate youth about how to further their education.