Quest Atlantis (QA) is an international learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-15, in educational tasks—currently we have over 20,000 members distributed across the world on four continents. QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. We have demonstrated learning gains in science, language arts, mathematics and social studies. The challenge was to design a virtual environment that has real-world implications and that is not a lesson yet fosters learning, is not evangelical yet nurtures a social agenda, and is not simply a game yet remains engaging. Our goal was not to create an isolated system (a fantasy play space) but instead to develop a context for supporting children in developing their own sense of purpose as individuals, as members of their communities, and as knowledgeable citizens of the world.

Though QA was designed to be used in classrooms and to support the learning of academic content, its game-based participatory structures, underlying pedagogical assumptions, reliance on new media literacies, and commitment to inspire engaged citizenship together provide a necessary contrast to the foci and practices that currently dominate much of school practice. The core elements of QA are 1) a 3D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), 2) a scripting engine for creating interactive stories and objects, 3) inquiry learning Quests, assessments and missions , 3) a meta-storyline as well as nested storylines associated with various game worlds, 4) a teacher toolkit for managing students and their work, and 5) a globally-distributed community of participants. QA was designed to foster inter-subjective experiences through structuring interactions, toward helping children to realize that there are issues in the world upon which they can take action.

Within this meta-game context, we have developed numerous worlds and as we observe and revise these designs through watching how they get used in actual classrooms, we also develop various theoretical insights in terms of teaching and learning and the possible value of games o support this process. As a project mission, our goals are to (a) rewrite the narrative of videogames as something pro-social and about things that have significance in the real world, (b) rewrite the narrative of school content such that students appreciate its real-world value, (c) rewrite the narrative of schools as personally engaging, and (d) rewrite the narrative about what it means to be a person in the world, providing students with pro-social identities and trajectories of participation.

Explore our site and learn more about this exciting project (http://QuestAtlantis.Org).