The Quest2Teach program draws from a situated cognition and community of practice perspective, including classic theorists such as John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, as well as modern learning and games scholars such as James Paul Gee and Sasha Barab.

Transformational Play is an experiential state that involves projection into the role of a character who is recruited into a partly fantastical problematic context, and must apply conceptual understandings to transform the context, and, ultimately, oneself. It involves positioning persons with intentionality, content with legitimacy, and contexts with consequentiality.

Small ‘g’ games are bounded, self-contained, and completeable. These games are pre-optimized to introduce, cover or re-enforce lessons in safe, simulated and structured environments.

Key genres include:

• Adventure: Optimized for enabling students to take on identities and solving problem in an engaging, narrative context
• Simulation: A framework for engaging in discussion, co-mentoring, tutoring, critique, reflection, “theory crafting”, and designing
• Strategy: Optimized for students to solve complex problems balancing multiple variables to accomplish desired outcomes 

Big ‘g’ infrastructure is open-ended, integrating small g games into a larger infrastructure with affinity spaces that foster student driven extensions.

Key components include:

• Data and Analytics Dashboard: Allows access to data to optimize the learning experience and show growth.
• Social Communities/Affinity Spaces: Frameworks for discussion, co-mentoring, tutoring, critique, reflection, etc.
• Achievement-based framework and gamification layers: Achievement systems with intrinsic motivators that unlock new trajectories.
• Smart/Modding Tools: Frameworks, tools, and support structures so students and teachers can extend and shape the core platform, and bridge the virtual and real worlds.
• Meta-game identity: Personalized avatars and meta storylines that unite small “g” and real-world experiences

Immersion provided language and practice for difficult situations:

When students were asked what they learned in this unit that will stay with them, many responded they felt better equipped to handle difficult interactions in the real world.

• “I like how this game gave us scripts for handling conversations. I think that’s huge. Sometimes we know what we’re supposed to say but it’s hard to find the words. It was great just reading the various options and seeing there are a lot of different ways to approach it.”
• “I would love to go back and replay this again as I get closer to graduation, so I can really feel comfortable with the language for handle things in a professional way.”

Game role supported Identity shift from Student to Teacher:

Several students felt that this game was the first time they felt like they saw themselves as a teacher, rather than a student.

One student shared:

“This was a significant shift out of not being a student anymore, you know? We are in the professional world now, and we need to see ourselves as teachers. This game was like a shift into ‘the real life’, and other people can relate to that struggle.”

Students participating in their last semester of student teaching pointed out that they had already experienced conflicts very similar to these, and that the virtual experience reflected the real world.

“I just want to say that I definitely give a lot of points for relevance, because a lot of these situations were like things that I’ve already experienced. I was immediately able relate to some of these situations.”

“I don’t think if we played this last semester or last year, any one of us would have taken it as seriously, but now we know, this is for real.”