Katie Salen Tekinbaş

DePaul University

Biography

Katie Salen Tekinbaş is Professor in the School of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University and Chief Designer and Researcher at Institute of Play, a education nonprofit that is focused on games and learning. Katie led the team that founded Quest to Learn in 2009, a 6-12th grade public school in New York City, as well as CICS ChicagoQuest, a 6-12 charter school that opened fall 2011 in Chicago. Katie is co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, The Game Design Reader, Quest to Learn: Growing a School for Digital Kids, and editor of The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, all from MIT Press. She has worked as a game designer for over 12 years and is a former co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media. She was an early advocate of the then-hidden world of machinima and continues to be interested in connections between game design, learning, and transformative modes of play.