یکی از سخنرانان کلیدی هفتمین کنفرانس بین‌المللی «بازی‌های رایانه‌ای؛ فرصت‌ها و چالش‌ها» دکتر Constance Steinkuehler استاد انفورماتیک دانشگاه UCI آمریکا بود.

دکتر استین‌کولر فارغ‌التحصیل دانشگاه ویسکانسین-مدیسون و استاد دانشگاه UCI (University of California Irvine) و یکی از پژوهشگران شاخص در حوزه‌ی یادگیری مبتنی بر بازی و جنبه‌های شناختی و اجتماعی بازی‌های رایانه‌ای و ورزش‌های الکترونیکی است. وی که اچ‌ایندکس 36 را در کارنامه‌ی خود دارد، در حال حاضر روی پروژه‌ی NASEF (North American Scholastic Esports Federation) کار می‌کند و روز پنجشنبه 5 اسفند 1400 ساعت 19:30 در کنفرانس ما به‌صورت آنلاین در مورد Enriching Esports: Four Years of Research Findings on NASEF سخنرانی کرد.
 

چکیده‌ی سخنرانی ایشان به شرح زیر است:

Over the last decade, competitive videogame play or “esports” has emerged as one of the fastest growing spectator and participatory sports for young people on a global scale.

Viewership of top esports title competitions now surpasses that of traditional sports, with the viewing audience of World Championship events such as League of Legends now dwarfing the size of viewing audiences for more traditional sports, particularly among youth. With this rise in popularity, so too have the number of university and high school varsity and junior varsity programs risen.

Across the United States, youth esports programs are also on the rise, becoming the latest opportunity to engage students in school-affiliated league competition and, in some cases, club activity. Most youth esports programs are school permitted but out-of-classroom or offsite, leveraging students’ interest in esports as a means to connect socially but not as a means for teaching and learning or for more targeted development of career-oriented or social emotional skills. While youth programs overwhelmingly tout the potential benefits, intellectual or otherwise, of such programs, to date relatively little is known about their actual empirical outcomes.

This presentation describes a novel esports program for youth with academic, career and social-emotional learning built into its design and the student outcomes that result for this “enriched esports” approach. Launched in 2017 in California and now expanded across both North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) and, increasingly, countries in Asia and Europe, the North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) takes a very different approach, using esports as a trojan horse for connected learning (Ito et al, 2013) – learning that connects students’ personal interests with academic, career, and civic achievement as well as with a network of mentors and peers that can support and amplify that learning and build relationships between young people and the broader community as a means for affiliation, recognition, and opportunity.