MIT to build educational video games with $3M grant – Mass High Tech Business News.
The MIT Education Arcade plans to create a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) as a tool to help high school students learn math and biology. The game is funded by a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The MMOG is expected to use task-based assessment strategies that will show teachers what kind of progress a student is making on a given subject.
“This genre of games is uniquely suited to teaching the nature of science inquiry because they provide collaborative, self-directed learning situations,” Eric Klopfer, MIT associate professor and director of the Education Arcade and the Scheller Teacher Education Program, said in a statement. “Players take on the roles of scientists, engineers and mathematicians to explore and explain a robust virtual world.”
Klopfer, the creator of the StarLogo TNG gaming education platform, and his team will work with Wisconsin games production studio Filament Games to create the game. Some Boston students and teachers will conduct pilot testing of the game this spring, MIT noted in a press release.
The MIT Education Arcade, which aims to show the potential of video games as learning tools, has built 15 video games designed to support math, science and humanities education.
