Discount Hotels In Virginia Beach | "Video Games and Today's Generation"

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There are visual, verbal, and hands-on learners. Soon, there might be a new category: video game learners.

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, the non-profit video game research organization Institute of Play announced the development of a new video game design lab with a twist.

The Games, Learning and Assessment Lab, or GLASS Lab, aim to teach younger students the new, yet necessary, skills that colleges and workplaces currently look for in candidates – all through video games.

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In the GLASS Lab, a video game would be designed based on a particular school subject, then it would be put into classes where teachers and students use the game in their lessons. All along, the organization is constantly gathering data to see if the program is really helping students learn.

More than “40 years ago, a new technology was seen as a waste of time,” said Michael Gallagher, president and chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. video game industry’s trade association.

That was the television, he said, a device that is now used often in the classroom for educational videos. “The next transitional leap is to video games,” Gallagher said. “But we don’t want to just talk about it, we want to do something.”

The GLASS LAB is still in its early days, though it is expected to continue its research for at least three years. The initial work is to choose “what is most compelling for students and, from an education perspective, what will work” to help students learn, Gallagher said.

Whether it is for math, history, or physics, a game is developed for that subject. One of the basic concepts of video games is that the user cannot progress until they achieve understanding of a certain skill.

The mastery of that concept allows the student to move on to the next level, and the GLASS Lab receives the output of the learning: data on how the student completed the video game.

Video games are “compelling educational tools,” Gallagher said. And if the GLASS Lab proves with their research that video games help students learn, the program will expand more broadly.

The GLASS Lab unites the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading video game company Electronic Arts, and the Entertainment Software Association. The foundations support the GLASS Lab with $10.3 million in grants, and it will be based at EA’s Redwood City, Calif. headquarters.

In a press release, Robert Torres, senior program officer at the Gates Foundation said, “We need projects that will work with students and speak to them in their native language – digital media. Through game-based learning, students will be challenged, and teachers and parents can get real-time feedback on student progress.”

With the changing technology and economy, expectations of students are much higher than the previous generations.

“The core skills are different today in the 21st century colleges and workplace,” Gallagher said. “Collaboration, empathy and problem solving are all key parts of video games and skills that can be put back into the education process.”