MacArthur Foundation provides $3 million to digital learning innovations

An education research team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison will play a significant role in a new $50 million MacArthur Foundation project investigating digital media and its impact on youth culture, learning and literacy.

The foundation’s targeted investment, announced today (Oct. 19) in New York City, will support two dozen national projects looking at different aspects of the digital revolution and its implications for schools and society.

Two of those projects totaling $3 million belong to the Advanced Digital Learning (ADL) Co-Laboratory at UW–Madison, which studies the enormous untapped potential of gaming, simulations and other digital teaching tools to transform the classroom.

“This is the first generation to grow up digital — coming of age in a world where computers, the Internet, video games and cell phones are common, and where expressing themselves through these tools is the norm,” says MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. The foundation’s report states that 83 percent of young people between ages 8-18 play video games regularly, and nearly 75 percent use instant messaging.

UW–Madison’s ADL team, comprised of seven faculty from three different departments in the School of Education, has been exploring this topic for the past five years. James Paul Gee, the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading and principal investigator in both MacArthur-funded projects, says digital media presents a major challenge and opportunity for the nation’s schools.

“The core message of our work is that young people today are producing knowledge, not just consuming knowledge, through the use of technology,” says Gee. “In fact, some of the knowledge students are acquiring outside of school can have greater value and relevance than what they’re learning in the classroom.”

Gee adds that gaming and simulations, when used properly, can be powerful tools to promote creativity, innovation and problem-solving in young people. They allow young people to apply concepts and simulate environments in ways that most conventional curriculum tools don’t allow.

Many young people are becoming “hyper-literate” in digital technology, using it in ways that will have value professionally, but public schools are struggling with the challenge and the cost of harnessing digital media in the curriculum, Gee says. One key goal of the ADL team is to demonstrate to educational leaders how and why digital technology integration works in an educational setting, through after-school programs that focus on middle school children.

“The UW–Madison group has a particular focus on gaming,” says Kurt Squire, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction. “Video games are the medium of the computer — and the technology of choice for the millenial generation. They are having an impact on business, the military, entertainment, and now finally education.”

While educators debate whether games “are good for you,” Squire says every other sector is exploiting their power to engage, entertain and educate.

The group’s $1.8 million MacArthur project actually supports a number of related and ongoing research efforts in the ADL Co-Lab. Examples include:

• David Shaffer, assistant professor of education psychology, who is studying the development of “epistemic games,” which are new types of complex software games that can simulate different professional responsibilities, such as those of engineers, scientists or urban planners.
• Squire, who is leading projects on how to integrate games into classrooms, starting with the immensely popular and complex historical strategy games, and on helping kids create games about their local neighborhoods and environment.
• Constance Steinkuehler, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, who is looking at how game users develop complex societies online and navigate “massive multiplayer” online worlds, or MMOs.
• Richard Halverson, an assistant professor in educational leadership and policy analysis, who is working to build new multimedia tools to communicate new ideas in the world of educational leadership.
• Elizabeth Hayes, a professor of curriculum and instruction, who is investigating ways to keep young girls interested and engaged in technology past the middle school level, when interest levels often drop radically.

The second MacArthur project, funded for $1.2 million, is a partnership between ADL and the New York technology company GameLab to develop software platforms that allow students to build their own computer games, as a tech-savvy and creative exercise.