Category Archives: Research

Attending the DML 2011 Conference this week in Long Beach? Don’t miss our workshop, The New Coviewing: Supporting Learning through Joint Media Engagement, Thursday, March 3, at 2:30 pm in International Ballroom II. The Cooney Center, together with the LIFE Center, has been working throughout the 2010-2011 academic year to better understand the new coviewing (aka joint media engagement) with digital media. In this effort, we’ve been trying to identify modes of participation with media (including mobile, interactive, and online)…

The Sesame Workshop research team has been following the development of a game promoting intergenerational computer literacy. Mindy Brooks shares some of the lessons they’ve learned about designing an educational game that appeals to both parents and kids. How do you design a game to engage both parents and children to play together and ultimately enhance the child’s literacy skills? After hearing multiple exclamations from parents such as, “Watch out for that word!” or “No, that’s not the “t” sound!”,…

“Who has an email account?” we ask the second grade children sitting eagerly before us. Almost every hand goes up excitedly. “And who has an S-account?” I then ask (saying the first non-existent thing that pops into my head). Almost three-quarters of the hands go up excitedly. I only heard one skeptical child turn to her friend and ask, “What’s an S-account?” As we interviewed children across the country to gain a better handle on their responses to The Electric…

The domestic educational research group here at Sesame Workshop gets to have really fun conversations. We talk to experts. By experts, we mean the 3- to 9-year-old children for whom we create content. We explain to them that we’re grown ups and don’t remember what it was like to be their age and that they’re experts about what they like and what they think and know about the things they read, watch and play. We also talk to their parents…