Can gaming change education?
New research on gaming design and brain plasticity offers more perspectives on educational gaming. Playing action video games on a regular basis can alter a player’s attention skills.
As video games continue to permeate our culture, schools and students are increasingly interested in using video games for learning. This interest has prompted universities and neurologists to explore what makes a successful educational game, what the current barriers to adoption are, and how gaming as a whole affects the brain.
According to a recent paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), games, when developed correctly and used appropriately, can engage players in learning that is specifically applicable to school curriculum—and teachers can leverage the learning in these games without disrupting the worlds of either “play” or school.
“Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Openness,” by Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen of the Education Arcade, an MIT research division that explores games that promote learning through play, explains why educational games have seen an increase in popularity: mainly owing to the advances in consumer games.
For example, commercial games have not only exposed new audiences to gaming but have expanded the range of education games, growing the conceptual areas they can reach. This, the paper states, is partly a result of greater experimentation with content and game mechanics that stems from new technologies and gaming genres.
“Consumer games are also changing the perception of the nature of video games, making them more accepted in a greater diversity of places. For example, gaming is becoming part of … the activities in senior centers, libraries, museums,” and the workplace, says the report. “They are also providing cheaper and easier ways to reach everyone, making open access to games a reality.”
To read more of the article by Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor at eSchool News.
Additional reports related to this article:
1. “Moving Learning Games Forward” (PDF)
2. MIT’s Education Arcade
3. “Game Changer” (PDF)
4. Joan Ganz Cooney Center
5. Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester
6. The Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon
7. National Center for Technology Innovation
I find this article interesting and relevant where it states “Barriers to adoption: These include curriculum requirements, attitudes of parents and educators, logistics of game integration in the classroom, support for teachers, assessment, evidence that games make a difference in learning, limited uses of games for all subjects, limited views of the games currently available today, and social and cultural structures that hinder school innovation”. Many of these areas are specifically targeted by the Engage Portal.
However, I find it sad that researchers such as Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, are still pushing the reason for games as the enhancement of cognitive functions. She states that aspects of attentions span are increased, yet we have know this for years. My masters study back in 2004 proved that some FPS games improve multitasking or divided attention as they call it now. And Dorval and Pepin showed that Spatial skills are improved from playing Tetris way back in 1986. Yet this article appears to move away from the fact the games create motivation thereby envoking persistent re-engagment, while the rest of us are doing the opposite.
Perhaps we need a new reason for using GBL, or we should just accept that it works (for one reason or another) and tackle the barriers for adoption without continually attempting to justify its existence.
Any comments by others?
I believe the question is ‘Should gaming change education’. Citing Stevens, Reed, Tom Satwicz and Laurie McCarthy – “In-Game, In-Room, In-World: Reconnecting Video Game Play the rest of Kid’s lives” The Ecology of Games. Their article gives tremendous insights into how gaming is utilized in the learning and socialisation of children’s lives and draws conclusions as to how educational processes could well learn by ‘how’ children interact and strategise in a gaming environment. Compelling reading and demonstrated to me how education could benefit tremendously from these interactions. Can gaming change education, absolutely! Would it be a painless transistion? Absolutely not. Reminds me of a similar debate going on with PE for schools and the move away from skills based PE to strategy based PE…could Physcial Education be leading the way on advances in learning!? That would be a turnup for the books
By Brett W M Young Founder of Exergaming Australia and Finland
(reposted from Linkedin)