Presented at CLS 2021 Symposia

1. Designing an Interest-Based
English Language Arts
Curriculum around Esports

2. Introduction
▪ The first high school integrated
curriculum that uses esports as
its main content.
▪ ELA standards, STEM practices,
CTE, and SEL under the
umbrella of esports
▪ Courses for 9-12 grades that
would replace traditional high
school English curriculum.

3. English Language Arts (ELA) Curriculum around Esports
▪ Connections with esports and content standards of
Orange County Department of Education:
▫ Next Generation Science Standards
▫ English Language Arts
▫ International Society for Technology in
Education
▫ Social Emotional Learning
▪ Spanning 4 years, the esports curriculum melds
▫ ELA standards
▫ STEM practices
▫ Career-technical education (CTE)
▫ Social-emotional learning (SEL)

4. Backgrounds
▪ A literacy crisis in the United States among teenage boys (Kleinfeld, 2009)
▪ Reading is an essential part of playing in video game culture (Steinkuehler,
2012)
▪ An integrated language arts curriculum would allow students to learn literacy
and reading skills while engaging with an intrinsically motivating context.

5. Design Process

6. Design Process - Workshop
▪ 3-day session to draft curricula
▪ The curriculum design team
▫ 15 high school teachers from Orange County
▫ 2 curriculum specialists from OC Department of Education
▫ 6 researchers from Connected Learning Lab
▫ 5 UCI scholarship esports players
▪ 4 Years, 4-5 Units per year, 4-5 Key assignments per unit
▪ Collaboratively, iteratively, and systematically engaged with the creation and continuous
improvement.

7. Structure of 4-year Curriculum

8. Structure of 4-year Curriculum

9. Result

10. Result

11. Result

12. Result

13. Structure of 4-year Curriculum

14. Credentialing Process & Final Revisions
● Approved as B-English course by the University of California, Office of the President (UCOP)
● Approved curriculum that qualifies high school students as having met the prerequisites to
apply and attend University of California or California State University schools throughout
the state.

15. First Implementation
● Students: Boredom with “traditional” English courses and expressing great interest in the
video games topic.
● Out of ‘comfort zone’ of teachers, parents, administrators
● Teachers often described the process as “building the plane while flying it.
● Lack of teacher familiarity with esports.

16. Student Workshop

17. Club Toolkit Production

18. More details at:
https://www.nasef.org/learning/curriculum/
Lee, J. S., Wu, M., Lee, D., Fleming, L., Ruben, L., Turner, T.,
Brown, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2020). Designing an
Interest-Based Integrated Curriculum Around Esports.
International Journal of Designs for Learning, 11(3), 78–95.
https://doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v11i3.27663