Archetypes: Using digital games to increase student learning

Archetypes, a proposed, role-playing simulation, educational computer game that helps students learn about decision making and gender roles. It is designed to address American societal perceptions of maleness and femaleness, to explore how these gender roles impact on modem job/career tracks and to encourage preteens and adolescents to recognize and internalize the depth and variety of these roles while contemplating their futures. This paper, which describes the proposed software as though it currently exists, explains the game's conception, its objectives and the theories that support its design and positions it as a potentially valuable supplement to traditional education. The goal of Archetypes, which could be included successfully into most middle and high school curricula, is to enhance the teenage self-developmental learning experience by stimulating their imaginations and curiosity and by developing their capabilities for critical thinking and higher-level reasoning. Archetypes is based on two educational theories - Cognitive Flexibility Theory, which allows the learner to spontaneously restructure his/her knowledge in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands, and Constructivist Theory, which charges the learner to formulate his/her own understanding of the world by reflecting on his/her experiences. A rough conceptualization of the game, using HTML and digital photography can be viewed at http://www.mysharmin.com/archetypes.