André Thomas designs and researches the creation of games for higher education, targeting difficult subjects such as Calculus to help students succeed. His approach helps increase success rates by 20% and more. He will share his approach and findings in this talk while providing an overview of the effectiveness of Game-Based learning.
André Thomas' passion for game-based learning resonates inside and outside of the classroom. He founded and serves as the director of the LIVE Lab in the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University, where he also teaches game design, game development and interactive graphics techniques. In 2014, he founded Triseum, where he serves as CEO and leads the creation of its award winning academic video games. He is an EdTech Leadership award winner, National Academy of Sciences board member, National Arts Education Association lead instructor, and Chillennium Game Jam chair. André also has been invited to speak at numerous education and technology events both in the U.S. and abroad, including SXSW, TEDx, ASU-GSV, BETT and European Schoolnet. His game-based learning insights and ideas are featured in the Huffington Post, Austin Business Journal, eCampus News and Learning Solutions Magazine, to name a few.

With more than 20 years in CGI production, André has worked around the world on legendary video games, live action feature films and memorable commercials. Previously he was Head of Graphics for EA Sports Football games (including NCAA, Head Coach, NFL Tour and Madden, the longest running and most successful sports franchise in games industry). He also created graphics for such notable films as Men in Black, Con Air, Independence Day, Valiant, Ant Bully and Tomorrow Never Dies. Follow André on twitter at @athomas_tr. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx