Nathan Holbert

Biography

Photo of Nathan Holbert

Nathan Holbert is a doctoral student in the learning sciences at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Before beginning his doctoral work, Nathan received an MAEd in Instructional Process from Washington University in St. Louis and was a high school chemistry teacher for five years. Working closely with the Center for Connected Learning under Professor Uri Wilensky at Northwestern, Nathan examines the ways cognition changes while people play video games. He is specifically interested in understanding how small changes in game designs might be used to alter the player’s understanding of physical phenomenon in the real world. Because Nathan’s work is in the realm of video games, the many hours of gaming others might call “free time,” Nathan calls research. When he’s not reading, Nathan can often be found “researching” anything from MMORPG’s (where he gets great pleasure fighting monsters) to racing games (where he enjoys thinking about how “real world” physics is instantiated by the game design) to the Sims (where like everyone else, he is sad that his Nathan-like sims always die!).

Sessions