Grand Text Auto

For Immediate Release:
September 30, 2014

The National Science Foundation’s Research on Education and Learning (REAL) program has awarded Dr. Mary Flanagan, Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth, and collaborator, Dr. Melanie Green, University at Buffalo, a three-year, $1,134,208 grant to develop and research an “interactive narrative” technology for use by students and instructors in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms.

Postdoctoral researcher Geoff recently represented Tiltfactor at the International Academic Conference on Meaningful Play, held at Michigan State University. The conference brought together over 250 attendees representing more than 10 countries, all joined in the quest of designing and studying games that aim to enlighten, educate, inform, or persuade players in significant ways. During the three-day event, Geoff attended a number of inspiring keynote talks from the likes of Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler, John Ferrara, Donald Brinkman, and Michael John, and panel discussions on topics ranging from “games for health” to “games and gender.” In addition, Geoff presented the Tiltfactor games Awkward Moment, buffalo, and POX for iPad at the conference reception and game exhibition, and delivered two well-received talks: one highlighting the completed games and initial research findings from the lab’s National Science Foundation-funded project to design games to reduce gender stereotypes in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and the second presenting the lab’s Metadata Games project as part of a panel exploring the interface between games and data. Special thanks to Carrie Heeter, Brian Winn, and the conference co-chairs, as well as Carrie Cole and the Michigan State graduate students, for organizing such a fantastic and inspiring conference!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Here’s a little more (okay, a lot more) to digest along with your turkey (or tofurkey) this year…

Given that one of the major goals of Tiltfactor’s current research is to design games aimed at reducing implicit bias held toward (or by) women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), I thought it would be worthwhile to take a step back and discuss what psychologists have discovered about implicit bias – and how games might be an especially powerful means of reducing or combating it.