How Can Games Be Used For Teaching?

A panel of games designers and academics this morning discuss using ‘serious gaming’ to help people learn. They were referring to ‘video games’ and only mentioned Alternate Reality Games very briefly when one of the makers of World Without Oil asked about it. This showed that there is still very little understanding of ARGs and their potential as a learning tool is still not recognised by the computer games industry.

Having said that, the producers of video games for learning have a lot of useful tips on serious game design:

Aliza Gold http://www.dmc.utexas.edu/ says school isn’t working as well as it could. There’s a 30% drop out rate in the US. how can the engagment that games give be applied to school. abstract ideas without enough context makes it harder to learn - trigonometry is more interesting when you’re building a bridge. College tutors need to be gamers themselves in order to use games as a teaching tool.

Games aren’t so new anymore and we can think about using them for more ‘important’ purposes. What mechanisms are we going to use to make this work? can games teach in the way a good teacher can? not all games are about killing things. ofcourse games can teach, how can this be done?

A teachers role these days is about facilitating learning amongst their students, helping them to ggrow understanding of themselves and the world.

Many serious games are boring, how can they be made more fun? Gold says the mechanics of the game should reflect what the students are going to learn by playing it. you’re learning a process during the game. so the game helps to teach a process. Wikipedia and google can be used as part of the game.

How can an online game be as addictive as say Halo 2 for students? Is just a competive game enough or would it need add ons like itunes for free? The student gamer on the panel says just the fact that its so different would make kids want to try it. Games will give the oppotunity to keep trying and keep learning if you miss certain aspects of the subject or some classes. The game fills in where the teacher doesn’t have time to go back over things with the student. There’s no secret answer how we motivate players. Study of player direction and ramping up of challenges, operating just outside the comfort zone and stretch your skills but sometimes you succeed and the more you succeed the better you get. It’s just beyond your skill but you see how you can get better. Almost winning keeps you going. The problem with larger classrooms is that not everybody learns at the same pace, the only kids that get motivated are a thin slice. Challenge, motivation and direction can be helped by games. Match the level of difficulty with the player.

Aliza Gold on large class sizes and larger online groups of thousands… games have the abiltity to scale. In a massively multi player context the game can be scaled so you interact in small groups, you also get peer mentoring and helping other players out. students can learn from mentoring and they like to do that. how do you know that the students ahve learnt anything? How do we assess the learning? Games assess the players constantly as they play the game. The challenge is to develop assessments of learning through games. The students themsleves might not see the underlying skills they’re learning. They need to be made to see what they’re learning, what they’ve learnt must be fed back to them.

How about budget and time to make these games? Games are very expensive to make eg $1.5 million - so what does it do that a book doesn’t do at much less cost? eg a game for the US Navy called 24 Blue. The job of the game makers is to help them understand where thigns were in teh deck of the ship. can the game replace training? no but it can show you more about what to expect, so the game adds quality to the training. So the money is well spent on such a critical need for good training in life and death sitiuations. What’s the difference between serious games and simulations? Sim City is a game used for teaching, it is a complex system where you learn the processes involved in running a city. As simulation and 3D environments become quicker and easier to make, immersive experiences in simulated worlds will become more and more common for learning all aspects of life.