Quest Atlantis
Quest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-16, in educational tasks. Building on strategies from online role-playing games, QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (known as Quests), talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. A Quest is an engaging curricular task designed to be entertaining yet educational.
Quest Atlantis is structured around seven Social Commitments. Click on the icons below to view informational pages from within the world of Quest Atlantis.
Each Quest is connected to local academic standards and to our team's commitments. Completing Quests requires that members participate in real-world, socially and academically meaningful activities, such as conducting environmental studies, researching other cultures, calculating frequency distributions, analyzing newspaper articles, interviewing community members, and developing action plans.
The core elements of QA are 1) a 3-D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), 2) learning Quests and unit plans, 3) a storyline, presented through an introductory video as well as a novella and a comic book, that involves a mythical Council and a set of social commitments, and 4) a globally-distributed community of participants. QA was designed to foster inter-subjective experience through structuring interactions that result in children realizing that there are issues in the world upon which they can take action. At the core of QA is the narrative about Atlantis, a world in trouble in the hands of misguided leaders. Participation in QA entails a personal and shared engagement with that narrative, as kids are asked to contribute information and ideas based on real-world experience to the activists of Atlantis. The narrative helps to establish continuity among the QA elements and helps to bridge the fictional world of Atlantis with the real world of Earth, an act of interpretation by each individual child.
In a very real way, we are attempting to reclaim the story medium in one of its contemporary forms--i.e., videogames--to use it in a socially-responsive way and at the same time undo the problems that are currently associated with the use of this form. The challenge has been to develop an adaptive entity that is not simply about playing yet remains engaging, is not a lesson yet fosters learning, and is not evangelical yet still promotes a social agenda. As a design-based research project, our work involves interacting with the developed play space, in both its material and social forms, to understand and advance specific research questions and particular theoretical claims.
Our research focuses on understanding the pedagogical and motivational impact of the medium, differences among genders and from different socio-economic backgrounds, the relationship between play and learning, the challenges in maintaining and participating in a globally-distributed online community, how to best facilitate the meaningful crossing of multiple life worlds, and how different design features of the project impact children's participation. More generally, our goal is to change a number of problematic narratives that are central to children’s lives. Specifically, we are …
- rewriting the narrative of videogames as something pro-social and about things that have significance in the real world.
- rewriting the narrative of content such that students appreciate its real-world value.
- rewriting the narrative of schools as something that involves content and stories that are personally engaging.
- rewriting the narrative about what it means to be a person in the world, providing students with pro-social identities and trajectories of participation.
Linked on this page are articles that illuminate some of lessons we are learning and the different ways in which we are supporting children in developing their own sense of purpose as individuals, as members of their communities, and as knowledgeable citizens of the world.
Quest Atlantis is funded by: 
