Computer and video game-like productions could become major new tools in higher education. That emerged from preliminary research sponsored by a $50 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.  Researchers are finding that simulation and role-playing games are powerful educational tools for building vocabulary, reasoning and social skills.

Joe Dysart

"Do young people act, think and learn differently today?" rhetorically asks Jonathan Fanton, MacArthur's president.  Currently, 83 percent of young people between the ages of eight and 18 play video games regularly, and nearly three-quarters use instant messaging. On a typical day, more than half of U.S. teenagers use a computer. And more than 40 percent play a video game each day.

MacArthur will encourage discussion, fund research, support innovation, and engage those who can determine if ‘digital youth’ are different than previous generations because they are the first to use digital tools on a widespread scale to assimilate knowledge, play, communicate, and create innovative social networks.

Universities sharing in the MacArthur Grant include:

University of California, Berkeley and University of Southern California, which are studying how technology is influencing social networks and peer groups of the young, their family life, how they play, and how they look for information.

The Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at  University of Wisconsin, Madison, which is developing "Game Designer," a software application to create games, while simultaneously learning about ethical judgment, aesthetic design, systemic thinking, and collaborative problem solving.  

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is exploring ways to teach students how to filter, judge, synthesize, and use information readily available on the Internet and other digital sources.

Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, which is researching how digital media is transforming young people’s ethics.

Illinois Institute of Technology, which is studying how digital media may change social institutions, and is developing new designs for schools and libraries based on those insights.

Fanton adds that the $50 million MacArthur grant will also tap researchers outside academia, including those in commerce and at nonprofit organizations. 

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, CA Reach him by e-mail at joe@joedysart.com