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Our Impact

Navigation Games does not yet have controlled scientific studies of our own programs. What we have is a clear record of what we deliver, directly observable evidence that students learn to orienteer, what teachers and participants tell us, and a growing body of research on the value of the kind of learning our programs provide.

This page lays out each of those. It ends with an invitation: we want to measure our impact better, and we welcome help.

What we deliver​

We have been bringing orienteering to children since 2015, when Navigation Games was founded as a nonprofit in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since then we have served over 50,000 participants. In 2024 alone, we supported 743 classes and events for 14,936 participants.

Part of our mission is to enable others to teach, so that orienteering outlasts our direct involvement. In 2024, 295 of those classes were run by teachers and partners without Navigation Games staff present.

Most of this work is in Greater Boston, with a focus on communities that have the least access to outdoor learning.

Students learn to orienteer​

This we can see directly. By the end of a progression, students orient a map, match symbols to real features in the world, and navigate a course. These are the measurable skills leading to expertise in the sport. PE teachers adopt the unit because they watch it work.

We also build our lessons to recognized learning standards. When a lesson is designed to meet a SHAPE America PE standard and students meet it, that is a documented learning outcome, achieved. Meeting established standards is itself a form of measured impact.

Learning to orienteer is only the start​

Navigating with a map is the visible skill. It is not the only goal. The progression is designed so that, in the course of learning to navigate, students build capacities that matter far beyond the sport:

  • Confidence, especially outdoors. Each activity has small, achievable steps, so by the time a student navigates a course, they have proof they can orienteer. That confidence carries into unfamiliar places and unfamiliar problems.
  • Setting a goal and working out how to reach it. Orienteering is planning made physical: decide where you are going, choose a route, commit, and adjust when it does not work. Students run that loop repeatedly with each course they navigate.
  • Problem-solving and resilience. Route choice means weighing options with incomplete information, making a good choice, and carrying it out. Recovering from a wrong turn without panicking is a skill, and it transfers to any unfamiliar problem.
  • Collaboration and communication. Partner roles and relays give every student a real job and a real reason to talk, agree, and work through disagreement together.
  • Spatial reasoning. Translating between a map and the world is sustained practice in spatial thinking, which research links to later success in mathematics and STEM.
  • Connection with nature. Students spend the session outside, paying close attention to the ground, the trees, and the terrain, often in green spaces near them that they had never really explored.
  • Physical fitness. Students keep moving for the whole session, often over varied ground.

These are the outcomes we are most after, what the progression is built to produce, and what teachers, camps, and families tell us they see.

What teachers and participants tell us​

After programs, we ask participants what they thought. A few voices, in their words:

The right amount of info was given, but the fun was to figure the rest out.

I can't believe that just a few days ago we were orienteering in this small area, and now we know how to explore the whole park!

It builds skills such as graphical representation, memory, and communication with others.

Teachers often tell us the biggest surprise is engagement. Students who rarely take part in physical education will spend the whole class running around, because orienteering is a fun game they can play at their own pace. One teacher described three students she had been warned would be difficult; by the end they were helping classmates improve their times and leading the group.

After a woods field trip, one student wrote that the high point was "when we started actually going out and orienteering, because I felt like I could actually do it." Another, after getting turned around, said simply, "the key was not to panic." That confidence and composure is among the most transferable things orienteering teaches.

These anecdotes from our program participants show a clear impact on individuals.

What the research shows​

We are fortunate that a large body of research strongly predicts the impact of programs like ours. Our programs combine physical activity, time outdoors, spatial reasoning, problem-solving, and collaboration, and each is well studied and linked to positive outcomes for children.

There is also a growing body of research on orienteering and navigation specifically, including studies with school-aged children:

  • In children, orienteering programs have been associated with gains in executive function, attention, and inhibitory control, and with stronger map literacy and academic achievement (studies with students in grades 4 through 8, including children with ADHD and learning disabilities).
  • Spatial reasoning, which orienteering exercises directly, is linked to later success in mathematics, and instruction that builds spatial skill carries over into math understanding (Geer et al., 2019; Mitchell & Malone, 2024).
  • In adults, orienteering combined with vigorous exercise improved cognition and raised brain-derived neurotrophic factor more than exercise alone (Waddington et al., 2024), and experienced orienteers report stronger spatial processing and memory across adulthood (Waddington & Heisz, 2023).
  • A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found significant large effects of orienteering interventions on physical fitness and memory in non-athletes, with a medium effect on spatial skills, and recommended orienteering across age groups and settings including schools (Public Health, 2025).
  • Orienteers score above normative levels on tests of executive function, sustained attention, and recognition memory, and outperform road runners on visual fluency and spatial working memory, suggesting the sport develops specific executive function networks (Hohl et al., 2025).
  • Building and trusting a mental map of the world lets children explore with confidence and independence, and eases the stress of not knowing where they are (Bond, From Here to There, Harvard University Press, 2021).
  • Researchers believe that memory and navigation evolved together in the hippocampus. Evidence suggests that working on navigational skills strengthens the hippocampus and improves memory (Bond, 2021).
  • Time outdoors and experiential learning support concentration, motivation, and children's wellbeing (Rickinson et al., 2004; Sheldrake & Reiss, The Wildlife Trusts).

We put our resources into delivering programs and improving the curriculum, informed by this research, our own experience, and feedback from the people we work with. We keep a fuller, sourced review in Orienteering Education and Research Around the World.

Measuring Impact of Navigation Games Programs​

Graduate research students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education have twice evaluated aspects of our work. We welcome scientific measurement of our programs. If you are a researcher, a school, or a camp interested in measuring outcomes with us, we would love to talk. Reach us at admin@navigationgames.org.