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(305) Testing our Hidden Agenda: What Happens Once Real Students and Teachers Get a Hold of our Game?
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SKU	gdc09_8346
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Can a game designed by college students, tested by middle school students, studied by research students and explored by teachers actually improve learning? The nonprofit Liemandt Foundation wanted to know, and worked with another nonprofit, Computers For Youth, to find out. In 2003, the nonprofit Liemandt Family Foundation enlisted Lauren Davis to figure out a way that their small organization could make a difference in technology-enabled education. They were interested in developing a video game that was as fun as the current favorite titles out there, but that also taught K-12 school subject. Once the Liemandt Foundation became more successful on the game development and distribution front (though much work still needed to be done on both), they realized the one step of the process they had been ignoring -- figuring out whether the games were actually fulfilling their goal of teaching a middle school subject. In 2007, they decided to focus their efforts and small annual budget on that task, working with the 2007 winning game, Slinkybomb (soon to become Slinkyball). The Liemandt Foundation partnered with Computers for Youth to do their testing in a two-phase project. In the first phase, Computers for Youth (CFY) would work with middle school students and teachers to enhance the educational capacity of the game without sacrificing fun. In the second phase, CFY would use the enhanced game in a before/after research study to determine whether middle school students improved their understanding and aptitude of Physics after playing the game. Through a months-long engagement that introduced Slinkyball to over 4500 middle schoolers while engaging a team of students and teachers to recommend improvements to the game, the Liemandt Foundation hooked a lot of people on Slinkyball. But when they collaborated with Computers for Youth to determine whether the game actually taught middle schoolers about Physics, the real results were revealed. This session will detail those results and complete the story of a small, nimble nonprofit foundation that has built games, got them into the field and then determined just how well it teaches, who it teaches best, and whether it could be used in the future to help middle school students everywhere about Physics.

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