The Game Learners Project is a project focused on highlighting the educational and health benefits of playing commercial video games. It is focused on delivering a dynamic, up-to-date, and normalized taxonomy of video game benefits, grounded in relevant academic research. It aims to improve our understanding of the positive effects, and long term benefits generated during gameplay.
You can contribute to the project by completing the 12 question survey located on our game reviews, guest writing, supporting our social media, or joining our team. You can read more about these opportunities on our “Get Involved” page.
We have been able to explore 100+ research papers regarding the benefits of video games and create a report that organizes these benefits by video game genre.
We have conducted research regarding the relationship of video game design and video game usability, finding a direct correlation to a video game’s beneficial value.
From this research, we have been able to create an application that estimates the video game benefits, likelihood of human benefit, and educational viability associated with every commercial video game.
To feed our application, we have been able to adapt a survey that gathers educational viability data points regarding video games through 12 simple questions.
Lastly, we leveraged artificial intelligence and created a neural network for predictive modeling that allows us to train our application to estimate the educational viability of a video game.
At the heart of Game Learners is the positive experience that gamers have had with their favorite video game.
The answers you provide, solely about the video game you have played, allow us to understand the design elements of that game. By understanding the design elements of the game, we are able to discern if knowledge and skills may be supported or enhanced by playing that game.
With that said, this effort succeeds or fails entirely on the commitment of our gaming community contributing to the work of Game Learners. Your answers are your contribution to building a resource that can benefit the greater community.
We will aways be committed to driving toward a future where video games can help every gamer reach their highest potential, but we can not do it without your help.
The ‘Game Learners Score’ is an estimation, based on our own research, of the the true beneficial value of a video game. The score aims to answer the following question:
Thus, you would have a higher chance of benefitting from a video game that is scored at 70% than a video game that is scored at 40%. Examples of potential user benefits include learning a skill, experiencing a positive feeling, or building new relationships.
The score is calculated using two inputs: educational viability and benefits.
Viability is the measurement of the educational potential a video game contains. In other words, it answers the question if a specific video game can be used in an educational setting. This concept has been covered in research already and can be found here.
The benefits are a list of applicable skills or functions (e.g. reading comprehension, focus ) that can be gained from playing a video game.
We have built an application, powered by python scripts, to ingest the educational viability and benefits and return a numerical value representing the beneficial value of a video game.
There are many ways for you to get involved in this project or the website in general. Click here to learn more.
You can contact us by filling out the form located here.
