Researching the Impacts of Esports Programs for Youth

Esports, or competitive video games, are a rapidly growing pastime for young people around the world. The opportunities presented to use esports to enhance education have not gone unnoticed and there is now a proliferation of esports programs in both middle and high schools in the US and, increasingly, abroad. But past experience has shown that merely grafting educational intentions to the interests of kids is rarely sufficient to generate positive learning outcomes. A Connected Learning approach (Ito et al, 2013) argues that learning is most powerful when student interest is connected to peers and mentors, on the one hand, and academic achievement, career success or civic engagement, on the other.

In this project, we investigate the design and outcomes of the North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF), a competitive esports league co-designed in 2017 with our partners at the Samueli Foundation and Orange County Department of Education and now serving more than 6500 students in nearly 700 clubs across 44 states and 12 provinces in Canada. The goal of NASEF is to leverage students’ interest in esports to engage them in academic content and pro-social skills, particularly among underserved youth, by focusing not merely on competitive team play but also on the diverse support activities that grassroots and professional communities engage in.

Our role is to understand the impacts of participation, for whom and in what context. We take a mixed method approach, leveraging both qualitative (field site studies, individual long form and focus group interviews) and quantitative (survey, game data analysis) approaches to understand what students gain from this enriched esports model and then how to amplify the benefits through resources and design.

PUBLICATIONS

• Lee, J.S., Wu, M., Lee, D., Fleming, L., Ruben, L., Turner, T., Brown, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2020). Designing an interest-based ELA curriculum for esports. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 11(3), 78-95
• Reitman, J., Cho, A., & Steinkuehler, C. (2020). A landscape analysis of high school esports in the United States. Manuscript submitted for publication
• Reitman, J., Gardner, R., Campbell, K., Cho, A., & Steinkuehler, C. (2020). Academic and Social-Emotional Learning in High School Esports. In Proceedings of the Connected Learning Summit, Cambridge MA
• Steinkuehler, C. & Wu, M. (2020). NASEF Internal Report: NASEF Parents. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.07
• Steinkuehler, C. & Lee, J.S. (2020). NASEF Internal Report: Student Motivation in League Play. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.05
• Steinkuehler, C. & Wu, M. (2020). NASEF Internal Report: Tilt. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.06
• Steinkuehler, C. & Reitman, J. (2020). NASEF Students’ Surveyed Beliefs & Attitudes. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.04
• Cho, A., Tsaasan, A. M. & Steinkuehler, C. (2019). The building blocks of an educational esports league: Lessons from year one in NASEF high schools. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundation of Digital Games, San Luis Obispo, California, August 26-30, 2019. [Received Honorable Mention for Best Paper]
• Lee, J.S. Steinkuehler, C. (2019). Esports as a Catalyst for Connected Learning: The North America Scholastics Esports Federation. XRDS Crossroads: The ACM Magazine for Students – Computer Science and Sports, 25(4), 54-59
• Steinkuehler, C., Reitman, J., Cho, A., Gardner, R., & Campbell, K. (2019). Enriching Esports: Assessment of an After School Esports Program for Teens. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.03
• Steinkuehler, C., Reitman, J., Gardner, R., Campbell, K., & Cho, A. (2019). Academic and Social-Emotional Learning in NASEF: Quantifying the Patterns in Qualitative Observations. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.02
• Anderson, C.A., Tsaasan, A.M., Reitman, J., Lee, J.S., Wu, M., Steele, H., Turner, T., & Steinkuehler, C. (2018). Understanding Esports as a STEM Career Ready Curriculum in the Wild. In the IEEE Proceedings of VS-Games (pp. 224-230)
• Steinkuehler, C., Cho, A., & Tsaasan, A.M. (2018). Formative Evaluation of the Inaugural Season of the Orange County High School Esports League. Connected Learning Lab White Paper No. 5013.01
• Lee, J.S., Wells, G., Anderson, C.G., & Steinkuehler, C. (2021). NASEF Internal Report: Student Outcomes and Attitudes.
• Lee, J.S., Wells, G., Anderson, C.G., & Steinkuehler, C. (2021). NASEF Internal Report: Staff Survey Report.
• Nour, N., O’Leary, S.R., Martinez, R., Gardner, R., Anderson, C.G., & Steinkuehler, S. (2021). NASEF Internal Report: Diversifying Student Participation.
• Reitman, J.G., Anderson, C.G., & Steinkuehler, C. (2021). NASEF Internal Report: Discord Community Challenges, Tools, and Strategies.
• Wu, M., Anderson, C.G., & Steinkuehler, C. (2021). NASEF Internal Report: Student Interviews.

TEAM

• Constance Steinkuehler (Primary Investigator)
• Kurt Squire (Primary Investigator)
• Craig G Anderson (Postdoc)
• Jeseok Lee (Graduate Student)
• Jason G. Reitman (Graduate Student)
• Reginald Gardner (Graduate Student)
• Minnie Wu (Graduate Student)
• Maria Anderson-Coto (Graduate Student)
• Garrison Wells (Graduate Student)
• Nour Hamade (Undergraduate Intern)