Healthy Teen Relationships
                      • HealthyTeen

 

                      • HealthyTeen

 


  • Overview
    Healthy Teen Relationships educational videogame is the world’s first immersive digital game designed exclusively to support the teaching and learning of positive, protective relationship skills. The player is a student, sent back in time to reverse the fortunes of school beset by digital abuse and dating violence. To bring down the Drama Burden — a measure of virtual school-wide anxiety and antagonism levels — the player must partner with Marisol, a victim of digital abuse, to identify and eliminate deep-rooted rumor mongering, bullying, cyberbullying and abuse. Along the way, students learn and apply healthy relationship and conflict resolution skills; build a non-violent coalition in the school community; and develop school policies to protect against bullying and teen dating violence. This breakthrough digital curriculum is an engaging and accessible vehicle that will drive the sustainability of violence prevention education in schools, community centers and other youth-serving organizations. Healthy Teens is being developed by a team of domestic violence experts and educators, and is based on Rhode Island’s nationally recognized Statewide Health Education Standards. The game takes components of evidence-based curriculum healthy relationships skills, healthy self-concept, and TDV prevention strategies—and embeds them within a highly engaging virtual world and youth-driven storyline. The experience transforms components of evidence-based curriculum into tools that students must learn and understand in order to solve game-specific challenges and complete assignments in the virtual and real worlds. At the end of the healthy teens video game students are able to:

       • Understand and articulate the difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship
       • Understand and articulate the rights and responsibilities of being in and ending a relationship
       • Apply non violent conflict resolution skills to resolve problems in relationships

    This game makes TDV education highly flexible and accessible. It can support highly structured accountability-driven learning over a multi-unit course in a public school classroom, or it could facilitate an open ended exploration during free time in a afterschool program, community center, or at home. This persistent platform is online and accessible to students anywhere there is an Internet connection.

    Development
    This breakthrough digital Healthy Teen Relationships curriculum is the product of a youth-driven collaboration between violence prevention experts (the Family Violence Prevention Fund and underwritten by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), educators and the leading software developer One Planet Education Network (OPEN), and Sojourner House (a domestic violence support agency) and Young Voices (a youth advocacy group). In less than six weeks of afterschool and classroom testing, 150 plus students have played Game Changers - Healthy Teen Relationships educational videogame—a true testament to the scalability of the product. The reception by young 6th and 7th grade Rhode Island pilot students, teachers, administrators, school technologists, and after school programs has been highly positive. The final game prototype is slated to be ready for more broad scale testing later this spring 2010.

    Background
    Video games are emerging around the world as a highly effective learning and teaching tool. Educational video games like Quest Atlantis (developed by OPEN partner Indiana University School of Education) embed subject matter within dynamic virtual worlds—simulated through interactive graphics, compelling storylines, and decision-dependant real world consequences. Logged in to these virtual worlds and acting through digital identities, students have the opportunity to interact with course material based on real-world issues and events. When combined with teacher facilitation and related required professional development, OPEN and Quest Atlantis video games can more effectively engage young learners and foster critical thinking than direct instruction alone.