Overview

MacArthur grantmaking in education explores one of the most significant forces shaping student learning and educational experiences in and out of school in the 21st century — rapidly evolving new technologies, including digital media. Through research, demonstrations, and innovations in schools, libraries, museums and other institutions, the Foundation is helping to build a new interdisciplinary field at the intersection of digital media and learning.

Through grants to scholars, educators, designers and practitioners, MacArthur is exploring the hypothesis that digital media are changing how young people think, learn, interact, confront ethical dilemmas and engage in civic life, and that there are significant implications for the formal and informal institutions — schools, libraries, and museums among them — charged with the education of American youth.

In 2009, the grant budget for this program area is $20 million.

What MacArthur Funds

1. Research
   Foundation-funded research is contributing to a growing body of evidence about young people and digital media. Ethnographic studies, surveys and other projects are examining what young people are doing online, their views on such activities, and what knowledge, skills and competencies they are gaining.

   See Recent Grants for examples of grants awarded.

2. Practice
   Grants also support efforts to develop new learning environments and to understand how schools, libraries, museums and other formal and informal institutions need to adapt and change as a result of young people’s use of digital media. Projects are looking at learning in virtual worlds, through game design, with mobile devices, and through the interactions in social networks—in and out of school. Resources support new school design, including a hybrid institution that incorporates media into traditional curriculum and a radical new model based on the principles of game design that shape and inform all aspects of teaching and learning.

   See Recent Grants for examples of grants awarded.

3. Field-building
   To help build the emerging field of digital media and learning, the Foundation portfolio includes the International Journal of Learning and Media, the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, and the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, all published by MIT Press. An interactive Web site and the Spotlight Blog also are resources for the field.

   To encourage innovation and provide resources for new learning environments, including those developed by younger designers and scholars, the Foundation funds the Digital Media and Learning Competition. This annual event invites U.S. and international participants to compete for $2 million in grant awards administered by HASTAC. The Competition seeks projects in the U.S. and internationally that use digital or new media as platforms for participatory learning. The Competition is launched each August, with awards announced in March.

   See Recent Grants for examples of grants awarded.

Updated January 2009