Dr. Eric Hanson
Instructional Design
Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
Mindful Gaming
Project Type
Mindful Gaming Prototype
Date
Started December 2025
The Problem
Based on some (potentially outdated) numbers, approximately 8%* of college attending males are at serious risk of dropping out of college because the imbalanced role that video gaming plays in their lives.
*see https://screenstrong.org/dont-send-your-gamer-to-college/
The Audience
The target for instruction are gamers identified by professors, counselors, friends, etc. that are at risk at not succeeding in college because of their lack of purposeful gaming practices. These students often have severe issues with mental health, and feel angry with themselves for their "addiction." Incidentally, there is plenty of research suggesting this isn't an addiction at all as compared to other addcitive behaviors - and that is part of what they must learn.
The Solution
This module represents one of a series of modules designed to help gamers understand what games are, why they are successful at grabbing attention, and then teaches solutions to adding context to gaming. The objective isn't to just curb gaming habits, but actually enhance gaming experiences so they play a more fulfilling role in the learner's life.
Module Link
Several years ago Dr. Swift and I worked with university administrators at our university to let us create an Esports program (along with Michael Daniels, who was ultimately placed in charge of the program). Our administration was skeptical about encouraging gaming, and had an overall negative view of the practice and those who played them. We were able to garner support by convincing them that a community of gamers taught correct principles would actually increase student success, and provide further recruiting & retention opportunities.
Years after building that successful program, Dr. Swift and I consulted with each other on how we could more directly address the specifics of this challenge, and provide instruction that could be more broadly adiminstered, and perhaps decrease that number of at-risk students from 8% to much smaller.
We continue to map out the entire curriculum, but this first module protorype represents the intial steps of this effort, based on the work of Dr. Swift, now published author of the book Mindful Gaming. The objective is to use the best principles of gamification to teach how to make gameing more purposeful & balanced.
We are confident that, with some guided reframing, these students will learn to feel better about their love for games, and be able to use what they are learning from gaming to actually become more successful students.
