In this episode, Heather Healy, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Super League, joins us to discuss immersive game-based learning and its role in educational spaces. She talks about what these spaces are like as well as the advantages they can bring to our students and classrooms. Heather and her team at Super League are collaborating with AVID to bring this type of immersive learning experience to students, teachers, and families through the development of AVID Creator Planet™, a free game that will launch on Roblox later this year.
. . . The key challenge for effective learning with games is for the learner to be engaged, motivated, supported and interested but also importantly for the learning to be undertaken in relation to clear learning outcomes . . .
Sara de Freitas, in Learning in Immersive Worlds, her scholarly review of game-based learning
Resources
The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:
- Girls Who Game: Equity in STEM, with Dr. Kendall Latham (podcast episode)
- Game-Based Learning and Assessment, with Rebecca Kantar (podcast episode)
- Game-Based Learning as a Medium to Connect With Every Child, with Tammie Schrader (podcast episode)
Immersive Learning Opportunities
Heather reminds us that the students of today are growing up in a different environment than their teachers and parents did. She points out the growing popularity of virtual gaming spaces, saying, “There are currently 2.7 billion gamers in the world. That’s almost a 50% increase since 2018.” She adds, “Young people are currently spending more time on Roblox and Fortnite than TikTok and YouTube combined.”
By embracing game-based learning and immersive learning environments, Heather believes that we can bring relatable experiences to young learners. She says, “It’s really important that if we want to understand these young people, that we understand where they’re spending their time.” The following are a few highlights from the episode:
- About Our Guest: Heather Healy is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Super League. She is a graduate of USC with a background in education, marketing, and entertainment. She founded a nonprofit, with the goal “to help young people learn to express themselves through art.” In the past few years, she has transitioned into gaming and immersive spaces, saying, “This is all about helping people of all ages to connect, to play, to create, and to learn through immersive environments.”
- Game-Based Learning: Heather explains, “Game-based learning is focused on teaching people . . . of all ages a variety of lessons through play.” While game-based learning is not a new phenomenon, the movement of playful learning into digital spaces is more recent. Heather says, “Our world is growing bigger because of technology. We can learn more things. We can learn these more things faster, and so it’s important for young people or people of all ages to embrace that.”
- Immersive Digital Environments: Heather says, “Immersive is really where you can feel as if you are in an interactive, 3D environment.” Rather than watching something on TV, gamers get to be immersed in that virtual setting and interact with people in that setting. By going from 2D to interactive 3D, participants can experience “close to what you would in real life.” The use of virtual reality (VR) goggles can be used but is not required for the experience to be considered immersive.
- Reasons for Immersive Learning: To illustrate why she’s so passionate about bringing education to immersive digital spaces, Heather references her personal experiences as a mother. She points out how her two children both learn differently and how both have benefited from virtual and gamified learning environments. Her oldest son struggled in a traditional school but thrived after moving to a play-based school, and her youngest son, who is autistic, “thrived with digital-based gaming.” Heather says, “Gaming has helped him with problem-solving. It’s helped him with hand-eye coordination when he was younger, and now, it’s helping him with reading and learning more about the arts.”
- Growth in This Field: As game developers create more educational games, their products continue to improve and advance. Heather says, “We’re learning how to reach and impact people with more thoughtfulness, more efficiency, more creativity.”
- Amplified Learning: Heather points out, “We intuitively gather 183,000 times more information per second when we’re immersed in a 360 environment than when we’re trying to learn that information 2D, which is reading a book, watching a video, or listening to a podcast.”
- A Dream: “Just imagine if there was a library of thousands of fun, immersive experiences that could teach all sorts of different lessons,” says Heather. Thinking about her son’s challenges learning languages in traditional settings, she imagines the possibilities immersive games could offer him, saying, “Through building an immersive experience, we can build a world, so he can visit Mexico or he can visit Italy. He can practice speaking those languages with other players who are tuning in from that country where it’s their native language.”
- Trends: On the topic of trends, Heather says, “I think if you ask 10 different people, you’ll get 10 different answers. . . . For me personally, I really see collaborative and social gameplay that’s really powerful.” She is also looking to see more real-world simulators that not only allow collaboration but teach real-world skills, like financial literacy.
- COPPA and FERPA: Federal guidelines for student safety and privacy are incredibly important, and Heather points out that games found in the educational section of Roblox, which can be located through the sort feature, are COPPA compliant. She also points out that games created through the Roblox Community Fund have been built from the ground up with educators to meet specified standards.
- More Than Just Entertainment: Heather describes the game development process as purposeful, saying, “This is a really long and thoughtful approach that we’re doing to make sure that the entire experience is really designated to teach students with a curriculum in mind, and not just as a way to entertain or babysit the kids for a half hour or an hour in the classroom.”
- Heather’s One Thing: “Tap into students’ passion.”
Guiding Questions
If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:
- What is your experience with game-based learning?
- What is your experience with virtual, immersive environments?
- What are Super League’s goals for bringing educational experiences to the gaming landscape?
- How might learning in virtual, immersive environments benefit students?
- What might the future hold in the area of immersive learning experiences?
Extend Your Learning
- Educational Experiences Available on Roblox (Roblox)
- AVID (official website)
- Super League (official website)