Joey Lee

• PhD
• Professor at Columbia University

Scientists, educators and policymakers continue to face challenges when it comes to finding effective strategies to engage the public on climate change. We argue that games on the subject of climate change are well-suited to address these challenges because they can serve as effective tools for education and engagement. Recently, there has been a d...

The following paper discusses the design, creation, and evaluation of a new class of digital games, Identity Supportive Games, as a tool to promote new understandings of self-identity and ethnic minority stereotypes. In particular, aspects of the Asian-American experience, including the effects of Asian stereotypes like the “Model Minority” myth, w...

Today's schools face major problems around student motivation and engagement. Gamification, or the incorporation of game elements into non-game settings, provides an opportunity to help schools solve these difficult problems. However, if gamification is to be of use to schools, we must better understand what gamification is, how it functions, and w...

The literature on climate change education recommends social, accessible action-oriented learning that is specifically designed to resonate with a target audience’s values and worldview. This article discusses GREENIFY, a real-world action game designed to teach adult learners about climate change and motivate informed action. A pilot study suggest...

Increasingly, millions of people, especially youth, post personal information in online social networks (OSNs). In September 2006, one of the most popular sites-Facebook.com-introduced the features of News Feed and Mini Feed, revealing no more information than before, but resulting in immediate criticism from users. To investigate the privacy contr...

It is easy to assume that virtual reality will naturally lead to improved learning outcomes, as there is a tendency to view VR, as an exciting new technology, as a “silver bullet” that can dramatically enhance learning. However, several research studies reveal surprising or counter-intuitive findings – for example, when low-immersion media led to b...

A rapidly growing number of educators and students now embrace XR as a powerful technology with affordances that can support many benefits, including highly immersive learning experiences, empathy and perspectives on social issues; XR can be designed in ways that can provide new pathways to success and opportunity. Yet the mirror image is also true...

Climate change is a highly complex social-ecological problem characterized by system-type dynamics that are important to communicate in a variety of settings, ranging from formal education to decision makers to informal education of the general public. Educational games are one approach that may enhance systems thinking skills. This study used a ra...

Educators face major challenges as a result of the shift from the Information Age to the Experience Age (Wadhera, 2016). For example, students are passive and disengaged (Capps and Crawford, 2013) and may struggle to see the relevance of what they are learning to their lives (Gee, 2009); also, important skills needed for 21st century learners-such...

doi: 10.1080/10494820.2016.1181094

Mobile language learning applications have the potential to transform the way languages are learned. This study examined the fifty most popular commercially-available language learning applications for mobile phones and evaluated them according to a wide range of criteria. Three major trends were found: first, apps tend to teach vocabulary in isola...

Mobile language learning applications have the potential to transform the way languages are learned. This study examined the fifty most popular commercially-available language learning applications for mobile phones and evaluated them according to a wide range of criteria. Three major trends were found: first, apps tend to teach vocabulary in isola...

At Teachers College, Columbia University, the Games Research Lab has created Greenify, an online social platform designed to foster flourishing sustainable communities. Gamification elements facilitated the creation and completion of user-generated missions, encouraging interaction between geographically proximate communities of peers. Three elemen...

Collectible or Trading Card Games (CCGs or TCGs) are enormously popular. They achieve numbers of players normally associated with online digital games. Yet they are sparsely researched and rarely utilized in the growing field of games and learning. This ...

Serious Games are digital games with an educational, informative, or persuasive goal beyond mere entertainment (Abt, 2002). They are promising because they often contain features that appear to be useful for learning (Squire, 2003), eliciting behavioral or attitudinal change (Yee, 2007) or encouraging new perspective taking, empathy, and new ways o...

Researchers in the learning sciences have long recognized the potential of online spaces to support learning activities; however, the pervasiveness of social media construction typically associated with "Web 2.0" represents a new context for the research of learning and instruction. Wikis, for example, have popularized a social approach to construc...

In this article, Joey J. Lee and Christopher M. Hoadley argue that not enough attention has been given to video games' role in identity development and exploration, important corequisites for learning. This oversight has resulted in the failure of many attempts at edutainment, in spite of the acknowledged potential of video games to engage students...

In this paper, we discuss an approach to providing students with first-hand learning experiences that help them understand cultural differences and aspects of diversity. As part of a five-week course, fourteen high school students participated in activities within massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) as learning environments to explore issues...

Several researchers have argued for the use of games in the classroom because they are engaging and provide many valuable learning opportunities. In many cases, however, edutainment has failed. This paper argues that not enough attention has been given to video games' role in identity development and exploration, important corequisites for learning...

Many IT researchers have noted the disturbing trend of an incredible shrinking pipeline; this pipeline represents the number of women who are involved in computer and technology fields from high school continuing onto graduate school or professional careers (Camp, 1997; Gorriz & Medina, 2000). A closely related phenomenon is how girls’ interest in...