What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Minecraft is a movie and a very popular video game with iconic block graphics that characters can "mine" for building material and gems. It's also what cognitive scientist Charley Wu and his team utilized to study how people learned as they played. Their unique study focused on both individual and social learning — and they found a clear answer to which players were most successful. (Hint: Get you a player who can do both.) Their results were published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

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