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 continues to explore and expand on the hypothesis that digital media use is 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 — that are responsible for educating American youth.

In 2011, the grant budget for this program area is $22.1 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, interdisciplinary research networks, 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 to understand how schools, libraries, museums, and other formal and informal institutions need to adapt, change, and collaborate 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 model based on the principles of game design that shape and inform all aspects of teaching and learning. Funding also supports learning networks in Chicago and New York City, in which collaborations of civic and cultural institutions are working together to help young people integrate learning across formal and informal, virtual, and physical environments.

   See Recent Grants for examples of grants awarded.

3. Field-Building
   To help build the emerging digital media and learning field, the Foundation portfolio includes the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, and the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, both published by MIT Press. An interactive Web site and the Spotlight Blog are additional resources for the field, as is the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, a new international research center at the University of California, Irvine.

   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 endeavor invites U.S. and international participants to compete for $2 million in grant awards administered by HASTAC. The Competition seeks U.S. and international projects that use digital or new media as platforms for participatory learning.

   See Recent Grants for examples of grants awarded.

Updated May 31, 2011