Correlations Between Video Games And Academic Achievement?

mozzer asks: "I'm doing an independent study course in university, and I'm writing an article on video games and academics - basically seeing if there's a correlation between the two. My prof suggested I take a sample of upper year, business strategy students, and see how well they fair at a strategy game (like Starcraft) and then compare how well they do in the game, to how well they did in the class. The question I'd like to ask is: What game do you think would be good to use? I'm afraid people might already know how to play Starcraft, which will skew the results (considering it has a fairly steep learning curve for new players). Or if there are any other ways we could test this sort of thing?"

Comments

FreeCiv!!!

[krmt]

I highly recommend freeciv for this one. It's got all the strategic elements of starcraft (and then some) and it will allow more actual planning rather than quick reflexes as starcraft requires. There are more dimensions to measure too, such as what successful academics spend their time researching, building, or planning in the game(i.e. what they value in the mock civilization could reflect what they value in the real civilizaion.) Plus, as the name says, the game's free :-)

"I may not have morals, but I have standards."

Strategy to gauge business sense?

[Yert]

I'm working on a games review site - Meltdown Gaming - (yes, that was a plug), and of the games we've been reviewing, I'd think something more along the lines of Airport Tycoon or maybe Stardock's The Corporate Machine excellent business sim would be more along the lines to judge dollars and sense.

Or, just put them out on the streets, with a copy of Dope Wars. (for Win95, now! whoo!) :)

For even more fun, pit the CS students against the business majors - have one semester's class project be to write a business sim the next semester's class has to successfully complette in order to pass... *evil grin*

Or even better - have them attempt to start thier own successful dotcom...or is that already an accepted practice?


Yert

What will the results really mean?

[ortholattice]

One question is, what does "how well they did in the class" mean? Once you get into college (a preliminary filter) there seem to be at least 3 measures of "success" which are only vaguely correlated, from my experience. At MIT there were fellow students with extremely high SAT scores but poor academic performance because of various motivational issues, as well as the complete opposite. And then there's "how well you do" later in life which seems to have a poor correlation with either. And "how well they did in the class" is such a small datum as to almost be meaningless. So, at a minimum I would ask for SAT scores and GPA, if that can be done in a confidential blind manner of course.

Also, how are you going to get serious students to waste time learning a difficult game (you can't eliminate them without skewing the data)? I'm not familiar with the game but a "fairly steep learning curve" doesn't sound promising, and if they just spend a small amount of time learning the basics, it doesn't necessarily indicate how well they would do as experienced players.

Finally, they may have little interest in the game to begin with, which can seriously impact how well they do, regardless of their inherent ability to do well at it.

Overall, you have a tough job ahead, if you want results that have any real meaning.

hey! i resant that

[fluxrad]

i se alot of psots about the corlletation of plaeing a lot of videyo gamze and doing poorly in youer studies.

as an englash major, i play alot of videyo gamze and i donot theenk they have hurt my studees one bit. as a mattar of fact, i theenk i have a signigifant advantege ovar my peers, beeng that i haev larned how to commnucitate in the infarmashun age (i no computars are the next big thing).

har har all of yuo hoo skoff at me. i will shooot yuo wiht a rale gun.


FluX
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