NMSU Extension launches ‘Learning Games Lab Toolkit’

With two decades of experience creating educational media and partnering with youth as testers and co-designers, a team from the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service has developed a “Learning Games Lab Toolkit” to help educators.

NMSU’s Innovation Media Research and Extension and Learning Games Lab in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences launched the free online resource in September. The toolkit shares information on the approach, lessons and activities honed since the Learning Games Lab opened in 2005.

“By formalizing and sharing the 20-year practices of the Learning Games Lab in hosting youth Think Tanks Consultants, we bring our research findings and processes to a larger audience and help others to design related programs,” said Matheus Cezarotto, Educational Technology Extension specialist with Innovative Media Research and Extension. “This formal sharing of the toolkit amplifies our Extension outreach mission and supports educators and youth program leaders at the local, state and national level.”

The toolkit helps educators support learners to communicate their ideas, designs and desires clearly and in a persuasive manner; use digital games and tools mindfully, purposefully and effectively; create unique and personally meaningful media; understand their role in the world, social and emotional impacts; recognize the process and careers involved in the design and development of games; identify critical issues in their lives, feel heard, and use their voice to create positive change; acquire knowledge about the experiences of peers and youth their age; and critique digital learning tools based on components of game design such as art, characters, gameplay and navigation.

“It was created with educators and particularly informal educators, 4-H educators, in mind,” said Amanda LaTasha Armstrong, postdoctoral scholar at Digital Promise’s Learning Science Research Center and former NMSU Games Lab coordinator who led the Think Tanks sessions. “The reason it was designed for them was to give them an opportunity to not only replicate in their own way what happened in the Games Lab, as far as understanding design, understanding critical review and working with others in a formal way.

“It can be flexible and adaptable to meet their interest and their learners,” she said.

The “Learning Games Lab Toolkit” describes activities with youth that contributed to the development and testing of past products created by the lab, including games and interactive educational modules such as “Theme Park Kitchen,” “Night of the Living Debt,” “Outbreak Squad,” Virtual Insect Collection Lab, “Dr. Eugene’s Biotech Lab,” MyPlateMyDay, Stay Safe Working with Horses, Science of Agriculture and Math Snacks.

To learn more or use the toolkit, visit https:/learninggameslabtoolkit.org.

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Levi Gwaltney

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