Improving Access to College through Games, Technology and Social Media
A First in the World Grant
What We Are Trying to Accomplish/Model
William G. Tierney + Zoe B. Corwin
The Pullias Center for Higher Education
at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education
recently
received a $3.2 million grant from the United States Department of
Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education through
their
First in the World (FITW)
Program. The new investment will enable the Pullias Center to drastically expand the reach of its online college access game,
Mission: Admission, created in collaboration with USC’s Game Innovation Lab directed by Tracy Fullerton.
The purpose of the project is to
implement and evaluate an innovative game-based intervention designed to
boost college-going outcomes in high schools throughout California. The
key project innovation is in meeting students where
they spend time—in online and game spaces—by using games, technology,
and social media tools to motivate, educate, and support students in
applying to college and for financial aid. Through a random-control
trial and case studies from selected sites, researchers
will explore the effects of game-based learning on students’
college-going efficacy, college knowledge, FAFSA completion, and college
enrollment.
The goal of FITW grants, totaling $75
million, is to enable the United States to assume primacy once again in
college-going and postsecondary graduation. A core belief in the United
States throughout the country’s history has
been that education plays a major role in enabling people to move out
of poverty. These grants are a continuation of that idea.
The Pullias Center has worked at
improving college access on several fronts through our mentoring and
writing programs, research on community colleges, analyses of
postsecondary performance and productivity, investigations of
the for-profit sector, and most recently, how technology, games, and
social media might enable more individuals to gain access to higher
education. The need for purposeful change in the secondary and
postsecondary sectors, and a dedication to innovation and
creativity are core assumptions that drive the Pullias Center’s work.
We are gratified that this FITW grant will enable us to test some of our
key hypotheses surrounding the use of games in increasing access to
higher education.
The project will enable the Pullias
Center to convene a stellar group of researchers, practitioners, and
game designers across disciplines and institutions to tackle a
persistent problem in a new way. Over the course of four years,
the project team will implement the college application game Mission: Admission
in 50 schools across the state of California through a web-based
platform that thousands of students will be able to access on their
mobile devices. Teachers will receive training and support for how to
use the game-based tools. The grant includes rigorous
evaluation of the effects of game play on students’ college
trajectories.
Our collaborative research team includes Gale Sinatra from USC’s Rossier School of Education, Dennis Wixon from
USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and an independent evaluation team led by Robert
Reichardt from Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates.
Key development partners include game designers from FutureBound, a
company that grew out of a collaboration between the USC Pullias Center
and
Game Innovation Lab, and social media experts from
MTV’s Get Schooled Foundation. Dissemination and implementation will be facilitated through a partnership with the California Student Aid
Commission and their Cal-SOAP affiliates.
The new grant builds upon development,
research, and evaluation activities funded by the Institute of Education
Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert
Foundation, and the TG Public Benefits Program. The project began with
internal support from USC’s Office of the Provost.
