Gaming SMALLab

Overview
Since July, the Institute of Play has been collaborating with Arizona State University’s K-12 Embodied Media and Learning group. Together the two teams have been developing a suite of game-based learning models in SMALLab (Situated Multimedia Art Learning Lab), a mixed-reality learning environment developed by ASU’s David Birchfield. Supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the "Gaming SMALLab" project seeks to harness strategic thinking around game design and embodied play as an innovative curricular and learning paradigm. This partnership will build directly on new pedagogy and assessment models currently being developed across the research network of MacArthur Digital Media and Learning grantees. Read ASU Press Release.

A collaborative, inquiry-based learning platform, SMALLab supports situated and embodied learning by empowering the physical body to function as an expressive interface. Within SMALLab, participants use wireless controllers or “glowballs” to interact with each other and with media rich content through full body movements and gestures. SMALLab's open, cube-like framework and light, unencumbered controllers encourage participants to move in and out of the physical interaction space freely. This fluid mix of real and virtual worlds fosters teamwork, active engagement and complex problem-solving between participants in and around the space. Using a custom designed authoring environment, participants can develop scenarios and then interact with them in real time—seeing and hearing the projected sound and image and feeling their physical movements bring their ideas to life.

SMALLab-New York, is housed in the Design and Technology program at Parsons, The New School for Design. There, a team of game designers, curriculum specialists and wellness experts meet weekly to "game" SMALLab—exploring systems-thinking, wellness, and math learning scenarios within the SMALLab environment. The “learning architecture of games”—rule systems, patterns of interaction, goals, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and work in teams are all key components of this research. As a mixed-reality, game-like learning tool, SMALLab's platform is primed to play a significant role in the proposed school Quest to Learn's future, targeting changes in the way kids are learning, constructing identity, making decisions, participating, and creating.

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