Video Games in Education

I caught this article recently on my school's website and it really grabbed my attention and imagination. Despite being a video game fan, I am generally skeptical of claims that video games can add value in ways that educate. However, I am familiar with the immersive concept of "flow", and understand how that phenomenon helps people bury days, weeks, and months into a game and not really know where all the time has gone.

The question is, can that experience be combined with education. After reading over this article, I am tempted to say yes. Let me think first about some of the games that try to educate. I think Oregon Trail provides some history education. I also remember as a kid playing stock trading games. My kids recently downloaded some free math-solving business games that were really well done. So I have seen many attempts at this kind of thing in the past. To a limited extent, I think they succeed, but they tend to lack the immersive quality that many games offer, such as the original legend of Zelda or many of the online games right now such as World of Warcraft (although I haven't played that personally). This article refers to a law game that regularly provides new challenges as a way to make it a more lasting experience. There was also discussion of problem solving ahead of memorization, and constantly escalating the difficulty level. This got me thinking about the challenges I have faced in education at a high level. I often find it difficult to find the right starting point for some things (perhaps years of mathematics or statistics are required to understand something I would like to know more about). Also, mentorships are often needed to truly understand things well. But what if games allowed a person to legitimately work by themselves and yet grow from a novice to an expert in a given area, by providing virtual worlds in which people advance from one learning challenge to another, and perhaps even interacting with others? For example, what if you were playing a stats game that felt more like a spy movie, in which terrorists were using computer networks to send messages and you had to solve increasingly difficult applied tasks that required you to learn incrementally some skill that the game's static resources (virtual libraries, etc.) as well as community members could provide. Or another example, what if the topic were physics, and the game is based on ancient Greece and you are fighting different groups and your success or failure is based on learning basic skills, and the tasks got harder and harder.

Here would be my thoughts on essential components for these types of games:

-Incremental in challenges

-Social Media enabled (virtual community like Second Life)

-You can go places (wander around like Second Life or World of Warcraft)

-The game is modifiable (everyone in the world can contribute content--challenges, graphics, game maps)