Anthony Salcito, the Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft, has listed the Transformative Games Initiative as global hero in education on his blog Daily Edventures. Salcito’s blog interviews a new educator every day with the intent of describing the current landscape in education. His goal is to optimize the application of technology and maximize student achievement. The interviews include many perspectives on education and the use of technology in the classroom. Interviewees include educators of various disciplines from all over the world. Even Bill Gates contributes to the conversation!

Rasha Alsaidi and Robert Duncan from the York College Transformative Games Initiative presented a paper at the York College Research Conversations series. The talk was sponsored in part by the Office of Undergraduate Research and  the TENSOR Scholar’s Program in Mathematics and Computer Sciences. Alsaidi presented data that addressed decision making in college freshmen. According to Alsaidi, freshmen tend to ignore the source of information when the content is difficult to understand. Duncan presented follow-up data from lab member Xin Lin, who demonstrated high school students could learn to improve their decision making for difficult choices if they were presented using classic game mechanics.

Alsaidi-Duncan_Abridged Slides