Quest Atlantis
a learning and teaching tool for students ages 9-12.

Sasha Barab wants to get in the game, in a big way.

Actually, Barab is already in the game-the online virtual-world game, that is. Barab is the creator of Quest Atlantis, a 3-D, multi-user environment that serves as a learning and teaching tool for students ages 9-12. The MacArthur Foundation has made a new three-year, $1.8 million award to Barab to help expand the reach of Quest Atlantis. Two years ago, the foundation awarded Barab $500,000 to build the project, which was originally funded by the National Science Foundation. Quest Atlantis is presently in use in the United States and several other countries, including China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Turkey, and Singapore.

Barab, Jacobs Chair in Learning Sciences and Instructional Systems Technology and director of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology in IU Bloomington, says online games offer educators a potent opportunity to engage children and stimulate their learning.

"Do we really want the storytellers educating our children to be Sony, Blizzard, Electronic Arts?" says Barab. "There are a lot of wonderful games out there, but as educators, we need to enter that market and start developing compelling stories that kids will want to adopt in addition to commercial ones. This grant allows us to enter that game, to bring up the quality of our software and our storylines and ultimately show the commercial industry that you can develop a space that will be used by tens of thousands of kids worldwide."

Barab is the principal investigator for the MacArthur-funded project, which is titled, "Scaling Out Virtual Worlds: Growing a 21st Century Curriculum." Melissa Gresalfi, assistant professor of learning sciences, is co-principal investigator. Associate Professor of Learning Sciences Dan Hickey and Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences Kylie Peppler are also working on the grant. "The MacArthur grants are some of the most prestigious a faculty member can receive. This speaks volumes for the quality of Professor Barab's work and that of his Learning Sciences colleagues," says Gerardo M. Gonzalez, University Dean of the IU School of Education. The MacArthur grant to Barab is part of the foundation's $50 million digital media and learning initiative, which seeks to determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

Players in Quest Atlantis use commercial-gaming strategies to travel to virtual places on "quests," during which they perform educational activities. Student-players can speak with other users and mentors and build virtual personas. The program supports students in learning academic concepts in various disciplines including science, art, math, and writing. For example, as part of a virtual storyline, students might use their understanding of water quality indicators to determine why fish are dying in a body of water.

Lana Cummings, a teacher at Bloomington's Binford Elementary School, uses the program in her fourth-grade classroom. She says she initially thought the program was a nice tool for teaching writing. "But after we used the program, we found it's so much more valuable than that," Cummings says. "It cuts across all learning styles, all levels. There's something for everyone."

Barab emphasizes that Quest Atlantis operates in concert with the human teacher in the classroom. Teachers guide students through various parts of a quest, receive student assignments through the program, monitor progress, and push students to think more deeply about issues introduced in the game experience.

According to Barab, as the virtual worlds project expands, he and his colleagues will be focusing on how train teachers and students in countries outside the United States. They are also developing a new "quest" concerning the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which players become first-person protagonists making bio-ethical decisions and observing the consequences of their choices.

What games can do, Barab says, is take students into the real world and show them knowledge at work. "Games offer something that traditional curricula are missing," he says. "With a game, we can bring the world into the classroom and make it available to kids, so we can travel to Tanzania or into a Van Gogh painting within the 45 minutes of classroom time that they have to do science or art."