Serious Games and Growth Mindsets: An Experimental Investigation of a Serious Gaming Intervention

Introduction

According to U.S. News & World Report (2018), at least one in three first-year college students will not return to school after their freshman year. These poor retention rates have endured for more than a decade and disproportionately affect low-income, first-generation, and minority students. While reasons for leaving college are often complex and personal, one common reason disadvantaged freshmen drop out of school at a higher rate than their counterparts is academic struggle (U.S. News & World Report, 2018). This problem implores a solution that addresses sweeping patterns of college attrition while also attending to students’ ability to persist in the face of struggle.

Existing research proves that nurturing students who believe their achievement is based on their effort rather than their innate ability improves academic outcomes of disadvantaged students (Dweck, 2006). Many efforts have been made to shift students’ beliefs about their own ability toward the importance of hard work and challenges in the pursuit of growth. Most of these efforts rely on informed teachers, trainers, and practitioners to implement the shift in their schools, making the efforts difficult to transfer across several schools and challenging to sustain. In order to address the issues of retention due to achievement gaps and sustainability of training across schools, we have created a serious video game to move students away from a belief in natural, fixed abilities and toward a belief that abilities change, develop, and grow over time.