Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance - U.S. Department of ...

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• Digital learning environments that promote grit, tenacity, and perseverance through
motivating learning environments. Video games—which provide opportunities for students
to be immersed in simulated worlds, interactive stories, engaging visual environments,
playful collaborations with other players, vividly designed avatars and personas, and
optimally challenging tasks that are adaptive and provide immediate feedback—are a new
learning technology that holds great potential for supporting grit, tenacity, and perseverance.
Steinkuhler (n.d.), for example, demonstrated that middle school students who tested well
below grade level in reading were willing to persist within an engaging video game to
comprehend text several grade levels above their own. See callout box for example of Quest
Atlantis.
Quest Atlantis
Quest Atlantis (QA) (http://atlantisremixed.org/) is a 3D multiuser, computer graphics learning environment that
utilizes a narrative programming toolkit to immerse children ages 9 through 15 in meaningful inquiry tasks. It is
intended to engage students in a form of transformational play comprising both online and off-line learning
activities, with a storyline inspiring social action. QA’s design principles draw from both commercial gaming
and important findings in the learning sciences about learning and motivation. Inside the game, students travel
to virtual places to engage in educational activities called “quests,” in which they become empowered
scientists, doctors, reporters, and mathematicians who have to understand disciplinary content to accomplish
desired ends. As part of their quests, they also have the opportunity to talk with other students and mentors,
and build virtual personae. According to QA’s website, more than 65,000 students have participated in the
project, and QA has demonstrated learning gains in science, language arts, and social studies. Teachers and
students have also reported increased levels of engagement and interest in pursuing the curricular issues
outside of school.
• Digital learning environments that teach about or promote academic mindsets. As
discussed above, there is a growing set of interventions based in social psychological theory
that target the development of productive academic mindsets. While most of the
interventions are paper-based, at least one involves using technology. As discussed above,
Brainology (http://www.mindsetworks.com/) provides an online interactive workshop that
teaches students about the “growth mindset.” A series of instructional units teach that the
brain grows like a muscle with effort and practice. Students are provided a series of activities
and opportunities to reflect in an e-journal (Paunesku et al., n.d.). Another example is
Transforming Engagement of Student Learning in Algebra (TESLA)
(http://teslahgse.wordpress.com/), led by Chris Dede at Harvard University. The project
focuses on a 4-day mathematics intervention for students in grades 5 to 8. The research
examines Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), game-like activities in which students
are immersed in a 3-dimensional virtual environment, either taking on the identity of a
science, technology, engineering, or mathematics professional to solve puzzles, or
vicariously observing others solving the puzzles. In the most interactive MUVE induction,
puzzles incorporate cognitive scaffolds related to difficulty and motivational scaffolds to
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