For the past 20 years, the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University has been using innovative ways of helping youth and adults learn new content.

"Innovation is in our department name," said Barbara Chamberlin, department head of Innovative Media Research and Extension in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. "We build on the innovation of the faculty we work with, whether that's in research, teaching or Extension."

The department has created interactive games and programs since the early 1990s, when Jeanne Gleason, now professor emeritus, developed some of the first games and interactives in the national land-grant system.

In 2004, Chamberlin formalized research on user testing in the Learning Games Lab and began an outreach program using youth as design partners. The department and lab have collaborated with many faculty members at NMSU and other universities as well as community organizations. This has generated global interest in the lab's animations, videos, games and interactive programs.

In 2023 alone, the lab's products had 5.7 million views, uses and downloads, including more than 2 million hits on 22 sites hosted by NMSU servers and another 2 million-plus interactions on BrainPOP, a leading educational media distributor.

"It's all part of discovering new ways of helping people learn," Chamberlin said. "The lab was designed as a research space for game development. Then, it became a powerful outreach program to help youth gain digital literacy."

The lab engages youth in design activities while they consult with developers during game testing. These "game consultants" offer ways to improve products produced by the department, apply critical skills and learn content.

"Everything we do in the lab with youth is intentional, from the session design activities, the games we play with them, to how we refer to youth who participate in the session," said Matheus Cezarotto, a coordinator for the Learning Games Lab. "We call them 'game consultants' because they provide valuable feedback in educational products under development."

The lab also works with adults on relevant games and applications, including content designed for farmers and ranchers managing their water use, students training as dieticians and visitors planning trips to White Sands National Park.

The lab has partnered with NMSU's STEM Outreach Center, the Gadsden Independent School District and national organizations like iThrive to test games under development and explore different ways to reach out to youth on issues like mental health, food waste, environmental impacts and other areas.

"When we design our games, we work with our audiences, whether it's students, farmers and ranchers, child care workers, financial educators or others out in the world doing their jobs," said Amy Smith Muise, an editor for Innovative Media Research and Extension. "We also design based on what transformation they're hoping to make, and we use three kinds of research: our content expert research, our research about how to make that transformative change and user testing."

The lab's work has not gone unnoticed. It won the 2024 Intellectual Property Award from NMSU's Arrowhead Center and the Office of Research, Creativity and Economic Development. It has trademarked Math Snacks, one of its most popular games, and secured copyrights for 14 games, four interactive programs, four apps and one app suite.

In December 2023, Math Snacks became available on Game Learning, thanks to a commercial licensing agreement that Arrowhead Center helped facilitate. In 2024, Harvard Online LabXchange began distributing Math Snacks and other Learning Games Lab products.

More recently, the lab teamed up with the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, based at NMSU, to release a water game through a project with the University of California, Merced, focusing on farming in an arid system.

The lab is also working with the University of Arkansas to develop a learning game to assist vendors at farmers' markets in understanding how to store and serve food in the market environment. With the same collaborator, the lab will produce a series of interactive animations to help neurodiverse learners, and those who support them, in training for roles in production agriculture.

Over the years, the lab has collaborated with many faculty and programs across the College of ACES, including on the popular Science of Agriculture series. In partnership with NMSU's Extension Family and Consumer Sciences, the lab released iTIPS, a series of interactive food safety modules in Spanish and English that provide worker training tools for food-processing facilities, especially for underserved communities and niche or artisan processors.

"Everything we do has Extension at the heart," Chamberlin said. "Extension is how we apply the research of NMSU to change the lives of New Mexicans."

A version of this story was originally published in the fall 2024 issue of ACES Magazine. For more stories, visit https://nmsu.news/aces-magazine-fall-2024.

The full article can be seen at https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-learning-games-lab-celebrates-20-years-of-teaching-through-interactive-programs/s/22d06c46-127e-459a-8a40-34bbcd429591