Project Hope: Video game based Education for Syrian Refugee Children

To support Syrian refugee children in Turkey by providing them video game-based education opportunities. Research has shown that these refugee children have very specific mental health and educational needs. A prior NYU-Bahcesehir University study by Selcuk Sirin and colleagues shows that an overwhelming majority of Syrian refugee children are not enrolled in school, and about half suffer from PTSD and/or depression. Turkey hosts the majority of the Syrian refugee population in the world but most of the Syrian children in Turkey lack basic Turkish language proficiency. This makes keeping up academically nearly impossible, which in turn can intensify mental health distress.

 

In response to this refugee crisis in Turkey, we designed and implemented an innovative video-game based intervention that includes Turkish language learning, mental health interventions, executive functions training, and coding, a critical 21st century skill for children throughout the world. Specifically, we provided 2-hour a day, 5-days a week program for 4 weeks, totaling 40 hours of online video-game based learning opportunity per child. The daily curriculum includes a combination of five video games including Minecraft, Code.org programming courses, as well as specifically designed games for executive functioning and Turkish language instruction (using Cerego).

In this meeting, for the first time, we will present results from our study, show what works and what does not work and suggest future directions for meeting educational and mental health needs of refugee children globally.

Selcuk R. Sirin, J.K. Javits Professor of Applied Psychology, NYU

Jan Plass, Paulette Goddard Chair in Digital Media and Learning Sciences, NYU

Bruce Homer, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, CUNY

Sinem Vatanartiran, President, BAU International University