Quest to Learn: Pioneering Game-Based Education for 21st Century Skills
Beginning this September New York City will be home to Quest to Learn, one of the most innovative 6-12th grade public schools in the country, that will use game design and game-inspired methods to teach critical 21st century skills and literacies.
The future of learning, as exemplified by Quest to Learn (Q2L) in New York City, involves using game design and game-inspired methods to teach critical 21st-century skills and literacies. Q2L, an innovative 6-12th grade public school, creates rule-based learning systems where students actively participate, use strategic thinking, and solve complex problems. This approach enables students to take on identities like explorers and mathematicians, engaging with a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum. The model emphasizes constant feedback and considering diverse points of view, moving beyond traditional teaching methods.
Created in collaboration with New Visions for Public Schools and the Institute of Play, Q2L will use games as a “rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.”
Katie Salen, co-founder of Q2L and Executive Director of the Institute of Play and Professor at Parsons, the New School for Design, describes Quest to Learn in this interview conducted by The Carnegie Foundation.
For more about Quest to Learn see School is a Game in the NY Post and visit Quest to Learn, Institute of Play and The Carnegie Foundation.
