Dive Brief:

• Trip Hawkins, founder of gaming giant Electronic Arts, has launched If You Can, a new company focused on producing games intended to help students develop social-emotional skills.
• The company’s first game is "IF…The Emotional IQ Game," which is based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.”
• The game is targeted at students in grades 6-12 and takes them on a quest where they make choices related to social-emotional skills, ultimately teaching them to manage their emotions.

Dive Insight:

Schools are increasingly trying to find ways to help students build their social-emotional skills, which can have a major impact on students’ academic success, as well as on their ability to weather the challenges associated with going to college or entering a career. One study found that students who participated in a social-emotional program in schools saw an average gain of 11 test points, even as disciplinary incidents declined. 

Hawkins says video games are a perfectly suited medium for students to develop those skills. His company consulted with SEL experts in developing and testing the game. Hawkins says the game is particularly good for special needs students, as it provides them a safe, private environment to test out their skills.

“We went out of our way to make a game that is very easy to operate,” he told eSchool News. “Science has found that when information is presented in the context of a narrative, [students] are more likely to remember it than if they are just given a list of facts…So this is a very powerful medium.”