The affordances of today's digital technologies have significantly changed the way students learn. Arguing that current learning theories have failed to address this new reality, Marie Sontag proposes a new theory, social-connectedness and cognitive-connectedness schemata (SCCS) theory, that integrates key elements of other theories with gaming elements in a structure designed to facilitate engagement of students' social- and cognitive-connectedness schemata. The results of a pilot study using an instructional design model based on SCCS theory showed that students learning in an environment shaped according to these principles developed higher levels of expertise and greater learning transfer. (Contains 7 exhibits and 2 figures.)