Games Are Better Educators Than We Think

Thanks to the IGDA for their new Culture Clash column, which discusses how education can work through gaming, and suggests that "mainstream, top-shelf games - especially story-driven games" are already letting us "learn volumes from our game experiences." As an example, it's argued that "Any one of us who played through Morrowind could easily ace a quiz on Vvardenfell geography, religion, politics, flora, whatever", although there's one major snag to those wanting all their classes playable: "Corporations and schools interested in educating through games look at the price tag, project length, and lack of scalability in a Fallout or Morrowind and cringe."

Comments

sure...

[SophtwareSlump]

Games may more educational than some people think, but they don't/can't/won't replace the learning experience you get from researching a paper or listening to an interesting lecture.

A bigger problem is when you try to argue with only some 'facts' you've obtained through gaming. Arguing with zoning committees over something you've only seen happen in Sim City isn't the smartest thing to do :)

Sid Meier's Pirates

[Prien715]

I was sitting in 6th grade class and my teacher was talking about pirates during the Spanish empire. Someone asked why they didn't use large warships like galleons and instead preferred smaller vessels. I raised my hand and answered that larger vessels are often at the mercy of the wind. Smaller vessels, like Sloops, typically had oars. Even if the wind weren't going your way, it was possible to board a ship.

The teacher asked where I learned that, and I felt kind've embaressed. I couldn't really say a Nintendo game could I?

Anyway, the article begs one question: with so much history, why must we often make fictional battles and fictional plots in otherwise realistic games?

Re:Sid Meier's Pirates

[ralphclark]

It's not just games that work, but novels too.

Intending to try stoking some enthusiasm for real life space exploration in my children, I just got through reading Stephen Baxter's "Voyage" to my eight and nine year old children (they read well enough themselves but they would never have read this).

Anyway, despite this being a thoroughly adult story about an alternate NASA history, heavy with politics and technical detail about NASA procedures and technologies, the kids just loved it. Where the book assumes an adult knowledge of twentieth century history, I kept having to stop to explain about things like Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and so on. I also had many opportunities to point out current news stories and draw parallels between the book's fictional NERVA accident and the recent Columbia disaster. But the compelling story made them pay attention.

Result: I asked my son the other day what was the main impact of Reagan's presidency on US national space policy. His answer: "Star Wars and the militarization of space". Nine years old! I asked my daughter how does Soviet space technology differ from America's. Her one-word answer: "Boilerplate!" They can also give, on request, potted career summaries of all the major characters (I suppose it's a pity the major characters were all fictional in this case).

Yesterday at dinner I mentioned the recent radar survey of Titan's surface and the theory that there may be large liquid methane oceans on the surface. My daugher pipes up "That's Saturn's largest moon!" And my son then says that he'd been reading about the Cassini mission and how the Huygens probe was designed to float if this methane ocean theory proved to be correct.

Mission accomplished!

Speaking for myself, despite the obligatory history classes at school I was never able to make any sense of it until I encountered Edward Rutherfurd's novels (Sarum, London, The Forest et al). These are like collections of short stories about people in a handful of families spread across many centuries of history, and woven together into a single narrative. Everything is relevant to and thoroughly explained in it's historical context. It really brings history alive.

So to sum up, it's the presence of a coherent narrative which grabs at your imagination, that is the key to learning. I'm certain of that now. This must surely have strong ramifications for educational policy.

Suitable games might be thin on the ground and also too expensive to develop under strapped educational budgets, but there are plenty of historical novels around which clearly exhibit much detailed research on the part of the author.

Interesting read, but...

[ePIsOdEOnline]

I find it interesting that the article fails to mention the research that is going into seeing if this is entirely feasable at all. Not only the work at MIT, but also a host of othe colleges all around like UTA and some others.

http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.ht ml

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

"Corporations and schools interested in educating through games look at the price tag, project length, and lack of scalability in a Fallout or Morrowind and cringe."

Yes, you got it, it is NOT easy to educate. When you think about how much a person learns during 2 hours of one of these games or something, if you scale that to 12 years of school everyone should know the encyclopedia britannica by heart. But they don't, because in order for a person to remember something they have to know why to remember it, and games provide such a reason: If you don't remember it, you will not get to the next level, won't play through the game... whatever.

Sure, development time is long and so on but that is what it takes. Especially if non-educational stuff is so much fun.

Schools have their own game development tools

[Draigon]

Well, sort of.
Schools already teach biology, physics, art, programming, etc. An extra class or club that embodies those ideas could make their own games. Funding and scalability issues are thrown out right there. Every year or two the club could produce a new game if they wanted and the price tag would be very minimal (no more than schools already pay for tech-related clubs *cough*).

To me, money and technical issues is not the problem. The problem is still an overbearing prejudice. When I went to high school, I was taking a web design class because it was an easy grade. I could teach the class if I wanted. The class turned into free time for me to kill on anything I wanted. Well, almost. You see, some wise ass state official somehow declared it wrong for games to exist in schools in any form at all. I used my free time to make my own game for my own entertainment, teacher found me playing it, school gave me a saturday. I spent the saturday school reading a book on game design. :)

Point is, video games are just that. Games (in the eyes of most people). A meaningless way of shedding excess energy and time, but nothing more. My bets are if schools were educated enough (hah) to see games for more than that, parents would complain instead.

Adventure games

[slux]

I'm not a native english speaker and games were what got me started learning english when I was less than en years old. I would play games such as Monkey island and really want to understand what was happening so I had a dictionary I looked up words from.

In a way, parser-based older adventure games were even better because you had to be able to type in the objects' names and also make no spelling mistakes. Maybe I should grab a non-english adventure game and try learning a new language. :)

These days most games are so basic story-wise that I imagine they couldn't work as language learning tools as well. Fortunately it seems we do still have RPGs and even some adventure games altough most are playing Counter Strike.

One more way that I've learned with games is by getting so interested about the subject that I would read the manual and even go to a library to borrow some books on the subject. This happened with Red Baron for example. It had a very informational manual and as a result, I know quite a bit about WW1 aviation now. Nowadays games are packed in DVD-style cases mostly and there is simply no room for all the stuff that always used to be a big plus in buying instead of copying.

Games are excellent teachers.

[arcade]

Okay, I'll probably be ridiculed for this post by some pedantic bastard - but what the heck.

I'm Norwegian. When I went to primary school, english courses started in the 4th grade. I sucked. Couldn't understand shit, and was among the few that really couldn't get a grasp on the language. Never was any good at human languages.

The summer between 6th and 7th grade I got my first PC. I had had various Consoles, and mostly "arcade-game"-computers before that, but now I had a PC. Think Monkey Island. Think Police Quest. Hey - think Leisure Suit Larry ;-D

In addition, I forced myself to read "PC-Format", an english computer rag.

Guess what happened? Went from one of the worst to one of the best in less than 6 months. These days I read english just as well as norwegian - and type both languages equally bad.

(Okay you pedantic bastards, rip this post to shreds. Point out my spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and so forth ;-)

Games (and interest in the subject) are good teachers!