Enriching Esports: Results from a Four Year Investigation of a Competitive Esports Program for Youth

One decade ago, high school programs for organized, competitive video games, known as esports, were rare or non-existent. Now, there are multiple high school esports leagues expanding across North America. The North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) is the governing and organizing body whose mission is to bridge esports with student college and career readiness. Founded in January of 2018, NASEF brought the novel concept of an esports league to high schools, but the goal of NASEF was to more directly marry esports with learning and not simply through play. The popularity of esports among high school students presents opportunities to foster Connected Learning environments.
Little is empirically known, however, about actual outcomes of school-affiliated esports clubs, and reservations about the social and cultural influence of esports abound. In this symposium, we present our findings over 4 years of our research works on NASEF and its participating students. Our research package covers a wide spectrum of learning through league play, from academic opportunities such as English Language Arts (ELA) and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) conceptualization of play activity to social-emotional learning (SEL), career opportunities (CTE), and even the perspective of parenting.