Gaming as an
Educational Tool
Abstract: This paper
explores how the growing phenomenon of video
games has created a generational divide with major implications and
opportunities for both the educational system and society.
Gaming inherently involves a set of learning principles -- aside from
content -- which are empowering "digital natives" or gamers with new
literacies, attitudes, and experiences. Despite public concerns
about violence, social isolation, and a bias towards males in gaming,
the evidence does not support those fears. Instead sophisticated
-- or "serious" -- games are increasingly being utilized in education
and the future points to increased investment in games for the good of
society.
Introduction
Gaming is gradually being
recognized as one of the most exciting future directions for education. Gaming is also attracting a lot of attention
in the media as it moves from being a minor activity to mass
entertainment
(for example, it was the cover story for The
Economist on 6 August 2005 and it featured heavily in the
international
edition of Newsweek on September
26/October 3, 2005, a “special double issue” focusing on the future of
entertainment).
The sales statistics for the new
“leviathan” of online gaming – World of
Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online game released in
November 2004
that has generated more than four million subscribers worldwide, where
previously sales of 500,000 would have been considered a major success
(Schiesel 2005) – reveal
an important cultural phenomenon, and, given the large
number of young people involved, educators should take notice.
Games versus educational software
Games and educational software are
usually considered at opposite ends of an entertainment/instruction
spectrum,
with the educational end continually trying to borrow some of the
motivational
aspects from games, resulting in automated drills and practice
disguised as
‘play and learn’ in programs such as Math
Blaster and Reader Rabbit,
aimed
mainly at younger students (Squire 2003).
The games end of the spectrum has
developed over time into a wide array of overlapping genres, including
action,
adventure, FPS (first person shooter), fantasy, simulation, MMO
(massive
multiplayer online), RPG (role-playing games), MMORPG (massive
multiplayer
online role-playing games), etc., available on a variety of platforms.
Thanks
to advances in technology such as broadband Internet access and vastly
increased amounts of digital memory in computers, these commercial
games are
becoming more sophisticated and game players are becoming more
interconnected (The
Economist 2005). It is the
serious, complex games – defined as
'simulations with a goal structure in which the player has a distinct
purpose
and desired outcome' (Gee 2005b)
– that are now
being examined for what they
teach students, particularly middle and secondary school students.
What can be learned from games?
Steven Johnson
(2005, p. 40), in
his book Everything bad is good for
you: how popular culture is making us
smarter, claims it’s ‘not what you’re
thinking about when you’re playing a game, it’s the way you’re
thinking that matters’.
James Paul Gee (2003)
makes the
same argument in a more academic fashion in his book, What
video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. He explores the theory of learning built into
good video games by drawing on three areas of current research: situated
cognition (the notion that human
learning is embedded in a material, social, and cultural reality); new
literacies (including visual, media, computer, digital, and
network); and
connectionism (the idea that
human intelligence is dependent upon pattern
recognition) – and comes up with 36 learning principles, including:
- Identity
- Interaction
- Production
- Risk Taking
- Customization
- Agency
- Well-Ordered Problems
- Challenge and Consolidation (also known as the Cycle of
Expertise)
- "Just-in-Time" and "On Demand"
- Situated Meanings
- Pleasantly Frustrating
- System Thinking
- Explore, Think Laterally, Rethink Goals
- Smart Tools and Distributed Knowledge
- Cross-Functional Teams
- Performance before Competence (Gee 2003, 2005a)
He sees the playing of video games
as a new literacy composed of a set of semiotic domains or genres,
which
provide players with new ways of experiencing and affiliating –
assuming new identities – in order to gain learning (Gee
2003). In contrast to what he
calls
the ‘content
fetish’ in schools today which view academic disciplines as bodies of
facts to
be taught and tested, gaming teaches students to appreciate a
discipline such
as biology as a ‘ “game” that certain types of people “play” ‘ (Gee 2005a) and
helps students practice how they can inhabit ‘authentic professional’
identities, by means of significant effort and experience, in new
disciplines or
semiotic domains (Gee 2005b).
Networked game simulations share with the constructivist learning
approach the idea that 'knowledge is socially negotiated' (Savery
&
Duffy 1995, cited in DeKanter 2005).
How are Digital Natives
different?
Growing up with video games is now
considered a generational, watershed experience, distinguishing those
born
before 1970 (roughly the time video games began) and those born after,
though
the labels used differ. The terms Boomers
vs. Gamers have been
used (Storey
2005), but Marc
Prensky’s
(2001a, 2001b,
2004) coinage – Digital Immigrants vs.
Digital Natives – conveys the
difference more explicitly.
The new modes of thinking associated with
gaming and the digital, online revolution are literally changing the
brains of
young people as they form, creating faster, parallel-processing,
random-access
‘hypertext minds’ – and the educational system must take this into
account
(Prensky 2001a, 2001b).
This generational divide also has
implications for the business world as Digital Natives transfer to the
workplace. In their book, Got game:
How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever,
Beck and Wade (2004)
present their research (based on a survey of 2,500 people) as to how
gamers are
different – as employees and as leaders – especially
in their attitudes
towards
the value of experience, their own capabilities, decision-making, risk,
and
achievement. For example, gamers believe
there are many potential paths to winning, that failure through trial
and error
is to be expected, that they play an important role (the ‘hero’
role) in
the process, and that peers are more to be counted on for assistance in
learning than those in authority (Carstens
&
Beck 2005).
Unavoidable issues
So far the most positive aspects of
video gaming have been outlined, though the public perception of gaming
still
tends to focus on three major negatives:
violence, social isolation, and gender.
Yet no causal connection between
video game violence and youth violence has been established – instead
as gaming
numbers rise, juvenile violent crime is at a 30-year low in the U.S. (Jenkins
2004). What research has been
done is
either inconclusive or unsatisfactory (The
Economist 2005).
Social isolation is also an
exaggerated fear. In fact, playing video
games is often a social event – whether gamers play with others
physically in
the room or virtually online (Jenkins 2004).
The affinity groups that grow up around games also provide a
social
context for gamers (Gee 2003).
Gender imbalance in the world of
video games is a multi-faceted – and changing – issue (Agosto
2004; Krotoski
2004). Female gamers increased
dramatically when The
Sims,
a social
simulation game, came out in the 1990s – and game makers are now
rushing to
provide new games focusing on social/strategic relationships for the
half of
the market that has been ignored for so long (Dickey
& Summers 2005). The
under-representation of female characters
in video games as well as stereotypical portrayals may be corrected in
the
process.
Serious games in the classroom
In the UK Tim Rylands
won the 2005
Becta award for best use of
technology in the classroom by playing the
best-selling multimedia fantasy game Myst
with his primary school students using an interactive whiteboard and
projector,
then getting them to write creatively about what they experience –
causing
their tested literacy levels to skyrocket (Twist
2005).
A commercial game more obviously
suited to use in classrooms is Civilization,
an empire-building strategy game originally created in 1990. How playing the game mediates students’
understanding of social studies has already been the subject of a PhD (Squire
2005; Shreve 2005).
An
extensive fan
site called Apolyton also provides
‘mods’ (or user customizations) for the game; this kind of
extension capability, available for many commercial games, expands both
the
life and the scope of games and is an area of potential innovation for
teachers
(Downes 2005).
Making
History is another history-based multiplayer simulation game
-- this one created with students in
mind -- which allows players to explore ‘what if’ situations by taking
on
the
roles of European leaders before, during, and after WWII (Larson 2004). The game is designed as
a
platform that teachers can customize to match their teaching styles and
objectives (DeKanter 2005).
Interest in developing “serious”
games for education is growing. For
example, the 2nd annual conference of the Serious Games Initiative
to be held Oct. 31/Nov. 1, 2005, will be dedicated to “Social Change
through
Digital Games” (Serious Games Initiative 2005).
The UN World Food Programme has also just produced a game called
Food Force to
help
children understand
world hunger (Peake 2005).
Even university students are being
encouraged to contribute to the cause; a contest called Hidden Agenda,
challenging university students to design a ‘genius game for a middle
school
crowd’ using ‘stealth education’, resulted in a winning entry called Refuse of Space which teaches physics
and aeronautics via players steering a pirate ship through space (Hidden
Agenda 2005). Not
surprisingly, an increasing number of
universities are establishing interdisciplinary degree courses in games
design
and development (Brenna 2005; Rajagolpalan
& Schwartz 2005).
Teachers can learn via games as well. A
classroom simulator for
teachers called simSchool,
which will allow players to practice their teaching
skills on virtual students and get feedback on how the strategies they
select
affects students’ learning, is currently in development (Zibit
& Gibson
2005).
Serious games in the library
What if information literacy could be taught by means of a game
designed specifically for that purpose? Such an idea, including
design and technical requirements, was explored in a workshop at the SLANZA 2005
conference (Robertson, Bagnato & Buys
2005).
How can school librarians connect with and support gamers?
Suggestions include carrying serious games and game-related materials
in the library and/or making them available via the library webpages,
librarians becoming
adept at games themselves thereby modelling the identity, setting up
workstations for games and organizing game nights, and trying to link
students with books on topics related to the games they're playing
(Storey 2005; Squire
& Steinkuehler 2005). Agosto (2004)
also
has
extensive advice about how to help girls get into gaming through the
library.
The advantages of school libraries adapting themselves to the gaming
generation are enormous. Above all, librarians should focus on
positioning themselves as strategy guides, rather than gatekeepers in
this new world (Storey 2005; Squire & Steinkuehler 2005).
The future?
A strong characteristic of Digital Natives is the desire to create
(Prensky 2004).
If playing games can be considered
the ability to “read” video games, then the ability to create video
games can
be considered the other half – the “write” aspect (Klopfer
& Yoon 2005). In the
future,
students will need to be producers of games, as well as
consumers.
The new literacies of gamers will increasingly present a challenge to
the cultures of our schools. The question is how quickly we can
re-organize around the learning principles inherent in games. As
Squire (2005) says,
In
order to realize the potential of such
gaming technologies in education,
it will indeed be necessary for us to "change the game"
in more fundamental ways with regard to our current institutions of
learning.
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Further gaming-related websites
Social Impact Games
http://www.socialimpactgames.com/
Games Parents Teachers
http://www.GamesParentsTeachers.com
www: Tools for Education
http://m.fasfind.com/wwwtools/m/2530.cfm?x=0&rid=2530
The Education Arcade
http://www.educationarcade.org/
WomenGamers.Com
http://womengamers.com/
Joystick101.org: Getting in-depth with games
http://www.joystick101.org/
GameZone
http://www.gamezone.com/
GameTalk
http://www.gametalk.com/
PCGamer
http://pcgamer.com/
GamePro
http://gamepro.com/
GameSpot
http://www.gamespot.com/
IGN.COM
http://www.ign.com/
MFO: Power tools for gamers
http://www.mrfixitonline.com/readPosting.asp?PostingId=682484
GameCritics.Com: Smart reviews for serious gamers
http://gamecritics.com/