tional teaching, bad decisions in a virtual
scenario can be as illuminating as
successes. If a student’s actions lead to
disastrous in-game consequences, help
students use this feedback strategically,
rather than penalizing them. When you
first introduce a virtual game, tell
students that they should expect to
experience failure and have times when
they must go back and start over. This
will go a long way in coaching students
to think about negative outcomes as an
opportunity to improve rather than a
message about failure.
ized that the time students spend
exploring the narrative, interacting with
characters, and even engaging with
content not connected to assigned
academic content is an important part of
the overall effect of the medium.
Allow Off-Task Behaviors
Strike a balance between a tight focus on
content that limits opportunities to
explore and a too-loose structure in
which students learn little academic
content. The teachers we worked with
were at first wary of allowing students to
engage in any off-task behaviors in a
virtual world. However, they soon real-
Support Transfer of Learning
Although it’s important to contextualize
students’ learning in terms of a particular story, we want students to see the
value of the content they learn for other
situations. If a learner never realizes how
this virtual experience relates to real-life
experiences, then the game playing will
have been engaging but not productive.
Becoming a hero within a virtual world
should enable students to see themselves
as people capable of using what they
learn to successfully transform their
world and to continue growing as scientists, historians, or writers.
By helping students connect virtual
accomplishments to real-life scenarios,
we lead learners closer to John Dewey’s
ideal of learning. Dewey (1938/1963)
argued that education should be about
giving learners the motivation and
expertise to act in problem-filled
contexts where applying that expertise
makes a difference. Dewey’s vision of
schooling is quite different from the
education experience most students
have today, which involves amassing
knowledge with the promise of someday
bringing it to bear on the world. In
contrast, when students solve problems
in virtual scenarios, they get a taste of
the real-world power of academic
content. EL
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Dewey, J. (1938/1963). Experience and education. New York: Collier MacMillan. (
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Author’s note: The work reported in this
manuscript was supported by the National
Science Foundation and the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Sasha A. Barab ( sbarab@indiana.edu) is
Professor in Learning Sciences and
Cognitive Sciences, Melissa Gresalfi
( mgresalfi@indiana.edu) is Assistant
Professor in Learning Sciences and
Cognitive Science, and Anna Arici
( aarici@indiana.edu) is Research
Scientist in Learning Sciences at Indiana
University in Bloomington.
