CEE Gen i Revolution Role-Play Strategy Game for Cooperative Team Play
Download the CEE Gen i Revolution Collaborative Game-based Learning Case Study as a PDF

The Council for Economic Education is a registered non-profit, offering best-in-class K-12 economic and personal finance education programs, including the basics of entrepreneurship. Each year, the Council’s programs reach more than 150,000 K-12 teachers and over 15 million students in the United States and in more than 30 other countries. Still, there is a large segment of the American K-12 student population that is not being exposed to economic and financial education, potentially setting these students up for financial difficulties later in life.

The recent economic downturn has brought nationwide attention to the dangers of an economically and financially illiterate society. Now more than ever, children need to graduate from school with an understanding of basic economic and financial concepts.

To advance their mission to educate young people in the United States and around the world, the Council embarked on a new online, interactive, game-based learning program, to more effectively engage the next gen learner.

THE SOLUTION

The Council for Economic Education and Digitec Interactive came up with the concept for a slick, anime-style immersive simulation game to teach students life skills, through the use of simulation. Gen I Revolution is a role-play strategy game that uses collaboration and cooperative team play to enable students to sign-up, become part of a team, and compete against other teams in their class. Students complete a variety of activities within the game to help them learn important personal finance concepts.

The game consists of fifteen interactive missions. Within each mission, students are introduced to a character facing a particular financial crisis, such as deciding whether or not to begin contributing to a 401(k) account for retirement. As part of the Gen I Revolution, the student learns about the crisis and uses earned Swap Points to enlist the help from a team of specialized “Operatives.” Players then, explore the virtual world looking for clues and must successfully battle the “Murktide” to win the game.

This multimedia online game is blended into the formal classroom curriculum to create a highly engaging learning experience and uses strategy, problem-based learning, level-based instructional scaffolding, and interactive direct instruction. The competitive nature as well as the engaging activities provides a motivating learning environment for students. The game includes a teacher’s site, for setting up classes, assigning students to teams and viewing reports.

THE RESULT

By utilizing the Gen I Revolution immersive simulation game, developed by Digitec Interactive, the Council for Economic Education has realized the following:

• “Students that were exposed to the Gen I Revolution missions saw a statistically significant increase in knowledge of personal finance and economics.”

• “Students in the treatment group, following exposure to the game, reported increases in average comfort on all twelve levels of the personal finance concepts.”

The survey results suggests that “Gen I Revolution is effective as an enhancement in promoting student learning about personal finance and economics when used by trained teachers – the usual model of the Council on Economic Education.”

These statistical findings are the result of a research project used to evaluate the educational effectiveness of Gen I Revolution. The research report released in conjunction with this project and the evaluation itself was performed by the Council for Economic Education during the spring of 2010.

For additional information about Digitec Interactive's e-Learning courseware production services click here.

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Established in 1988, Digitec is an award-winning eLearning production company, developing educational products for commercial, academic and not-for-profit clients. Digitec’s mission is to combine technology and creativity to transform learning from a singular, passive event into highly adaptive and engaging learning experiences that change lives.

With integrated production facilities in Orlando, Florida and San Juan, Puerto Rico, Digitec’s highly creative staff of 20+ in-house artists, Flash animators, audio and video engineers, and computer programmers are focused on developing best-in-class eLearning technologies for the 21st century.

Digitec follows the "Play to Teach" instructional model, implementing embedded, collaborative, simulation and immersive gaming experiences to better engage the “game-based generation.”