Overview

For more than a decade, Developing Lives has been engaging students by allowing them to try out their parenting skills from the prenatal period through adolescence. The new version 2.1 provides an updated parenting experience for today’s students, available exclusively in Achieve.

In Developing Lives, each “parent” creates a personal avatar, selects a virtual partner and/or surrogate (or chooses to be a single or adoptive parent) and marks the arrival of their newborn (represented by a unique avatar based on the parents’ characteristics). As the child grows, the student responds to events both expected and unforeseen, making important decisions (nutrition choices, doctor visits, sleeping location) and facing uncertain moments, with each choice affecting how the child develops. Throughout this journey, Developing Lives deepens students’ understanding of key concepts in human development. All six modules are accompanied by an updated quiz that can be assigned along with the activity for credit in Achieve.

More than ever before, in version 2.1 students will see the results of their parenting decisions with more direct outcomes from their choices about nutrition, lifestyle, and parenting style. Families also experience a new pivotal life event in middle childhood, such as a new sibling or parental breakup. Version 2.1 is also more inclusive than ever before with additional options for building a family and experiencing parenthood, and the finale of the program includes a new selection of outcomes for adolescents entering the world.

Major Changes in Developing Lives 2.1

• Learn More and Glossary functionality will be available to users if they go back to previously completed screens.
• More of the users’ choices and outcomes will appear in the Memory Book (e.g., lifestyle choices, Piaget’s cognitive stages reached by the child).
• The parenthood experience will be gender agnostic: Users can have any gender identity and be the pregnant parent, partner, adoptive parent, etc.
• Whenever possible, feedback to users’ choices appears on the same screen as the question. Throughout the simulation, various scenarios are more interactive and/or involve more choices on the part of the user.
• Personality inventory results for users and their partners and/or surrogates will be more closely tied to certain choices and outcomes later on.
• The prenatal module is briefer and more streamlined (e.g., one of the prenatal tests has been dropped, as have some superfluous screens on relationship dynamics during pregnancy and right after birth).
• The newborn avatar has been redesigned.
• Nutrition and other lifestyle-related choices have a more overt influence on outcomes throughout the simulation (e.g., Apgar score, certain aspects of physical and cognitive development).
• Socioeconomic status has more overt influence on outcomes throughout the simulation (e.g., family leave, childcare, and school choices).
• Parenting styles are more closely tied to outcomes in childhood and adolescence (e.g., Marshmallow test, bullying, popularity, risk-taking behaviors, and final outcomes at age 18).
• Users get to choose an elementary school for their child (based on SES) rather than having one randomly assigned to them.
• Users are now randomly assigned a “pivotal life event” (new sibling, parental breakup, first extended time away from parent) in the middle childhood module.
• There is a more impactful ending to the adolescence module. How the child “turned out” is more obviously tied to the user’s parenting decisions throughout the simulation, and new avatar illustrations appear there.
• Performance is improved in certain sections of the activity to resolve issues including freezing and loss of response progression.