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Lower-tier colleges and universities in both India and China suffer from passive learning styles. Design and project work is typically absent, the curricula do not focus on problem solving or building project management and communication skills, and there are no internships or other work experience. ”Engineering education is much more theoretically oriented, and students don’t really get this fully blended education that allows them to think outside the box,” says Denis Simon, a professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs, who focuses on technology and education in China. ”They haven’t had the interaction with real live engineering that grads here have, so they’re very green when they come into the workplace.”

The main problem, though, is the sheer mass of students enrolled in engineering classes. ”When you have 100 students per teacher, you really can’t get hands-on and be interactive,” he says.

Genomics Digital Lab (GDL), an interactive online gaming program from Toronto-based Spongelab Interactive that was designed for high school and college-level biology and science students. What's unique about GDL is that it turns cell biology into a progressive learning world full of battle scenarios, puzzles, and races against time. In other words, it makes learning fun.

The germination of the whole idea came during his studies when he realized complex cells comprise a 3D dynamic system that simply can't be taught easily in a two-dimensional setting.

A key to GDL's success is the fact that it can be delivered via a web browser, so no matter how rich the content, it can be used in class, at home or anywhere else one might have access to the internet.

There is, at least, growing support for experimentation: in March, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, released a draft National Educational Technology Plan that reads a bit like a manifesto for change, proposing among other things that the full force of technology be leveraged to meet “aggressive goals” and “grand” challenges, including increasing the percentage of the population that graduates from college to 60 percent from 39 percent in the next 10 years. What it takes to get there, the report suggests, is a “new kind of R.& D. for education” that encourages bold ideas and “high risk/high gain” endeavors — possibly even a school built around aliens, villains and video games.

ant time building their own games. Sometimes they design

miniworld, a dynamic system governed by a set of rules, complete with challenges, obstacles and goals. At its best, game design can be an interdisciplinary exercise involving math, writing, art, c