Quest2Teach

Quest2Teach is a game-infused virtual learning environment and social-professional network designed for teacher preparation programs to bridge between students’ theoretical coursework and its application into the field, as well as PD for professional educators. Pre-service students and in-service teachers evolve their professional identity in a variety of narrative-based 3D role-playing scenarios, each with a particular theoretical focus such as Writers Workshop, Student Mentoring, Data-Driven Decision Making and other standards-based skills, guided by their instructor or facilitator, and embedded within a larger experience-based and game-based curricula. In these immersive worlds, players create their professional avatar (which they evolve over several semesters), play out roles, solve contextualized authentic problems, fail safely, see the impact of their individual decisions and trajectories, while gaining experience and fluency in these theories-in-action. Game meters and other in-game analytics are fed back into a real-world professional network, leveraging gamified achievement layers to validate and extend their digital experiences into their real lives, via this network of supportive network colleagues. Here, game achievements are translated into a social currency that is used to validate other players as they reflect, craft, and evolve their impact stories of how they are translating core learning concepts to the real world. In this way, we are leveraging bounded learning experiences and gamified achievement layers to achieve real-world professional growth and impact.