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Reflections on DigiPlay 4: Teaching with, learning from computer games
By Mary Ulicsak, Learning Development Manager, Futurelab |
On 28 January the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media within the Institute of Education, University of London at The London Knowledge Lab hosted the fourth seminar in the DigiPlay series. Their goal was to bring together those interested in the use of gaming technology in educational contexts in order to explore how it could enhance learning.
The idea that learning occurs when playing a computer or video game is not a novel one. The proposal that computer games can be used in formal learning has been in the public domain for over 16 years1. Recent research, for example What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy by James Gee2, or Marc Prensky's observations on 'twitch culture'3, highlight that a good game is a compelling learning experience. The purpose of the DigiPlay seminar was to explore how this idea could be taken forward.
The day was divided into four sessions focusing on different aspects of the potential for games in education and industry: their usage, analysis, design and developers. This article briefly highlights some of the points raised throughout the day.
As stated there is this assumption that students learn through playing games. Yet despite this, as David Buckingham pointed out in his talk, there is no agreement about how such games enhance learning. Prof Buckingham proposed that there were three main theories of how learning occurred in games but that none were totally satisfactory.
- Behaviourism
- common in drill and skill-type activities, for example, flight simulators. In these it is possible to achieve a reward without having to interpret the information. However, rewards in the game do not equate to rewards in real life.
- Cognitive
- this category incorporates some role-playing games, here active mental processes occur but there is still the same issue of transfer. The argument is still continuing about whether being exposed to aggression via a video game leads to aggression in actual behaviour4.
- Social
- learning here occurs by the setting up of communities of players that support each other, for example, the message boards dedicated to Age of Empires, or magazines such as The Edge and PC Gamer that have hints and tips for players to help them achieve a game level. Yet this ignores the fact that gaming can be antisocial.
Another issue raised by Prof Buckingham was that games are seen to engage reluctant learners. This idea that they are automatically motivating is appealing but where does the teaching fit in? Are teachers teaching through games or about games? If a good game gives sufficient information to complete the activity but does not flag it as the key concept how can this learning be made explicit without turning it into a drill and skill exercise? This issue was returned to later in the session. Tim Dumbleton from Becta illustrated how a teacher used Myst not as a role-playing game but as an opportunity for children in a primary school to do creative writing. The session was interactive in that the students explored the environment but used the feelings evoked within their written work. Using games in the classroom means appreciating that games fall into an entertainment rather than educational category and that one cannot extrapolate findings from specific games to games in general - despite overlaps in the structure of games (eg the controls which are the same across games).
The seminar also explored the role of politics within games. Games have always been political - from Monopoly to The Sims - it is just that the politics need not be overt. Both Paul Hollins and Siobhan Thomas argued that politics does not equate only to political speech. The harder part is to analyse the influence these games have on what is being learnt.
The session on politics also contained a video of a 3 and 4 year-old playing with a Lego computer game and Lego in real life. The question being posed was how the two representations of the same racing concept influenced each other. A simple example would be the recreation of the onscreen Lego environment on the kitchen floor and leaving the onscreen Lego environment to explore rather than race. This idea that learning about the influence of games through observation of the players can inform understanding of learning was picked up in the next session.
This session focused on the role of user-led design in educational game development. The session included a Futurelab presentation on the role of informants - be they students, teachers, graphic artists, software developers or academics - in the creation of a learning environment5. The second contributor, Caroline Pelletier, discussed methods of working with students - this highlighted the need for students to be exposed to the principles of game design prior to having them act as co-designers. In both presentations the goal is to create a resource that is motivational but embedded in teaching strategies, pedagogies and educational contexts. This supported the argument about the difficulties in grafting games into education discussed in the first session.
The final panel, chaired by Aphra Kerr with Aleks Krotoski, Mark Eyles and Jon Weinbren, looked at whether the designers of games were influential in dictating the audience. Although not strictly speaking an educational issue, the lack of females in the design process, though not the market place, is causing concern. Women, it seems, make up only 2% of game programmers yet 25% of girls play games. This is corroborated by the small proportion of females within game design courses in the UK. Yet games where women are involved in the design process, such as The Sims, have a large audience of females as well as being used in an educational setting.
Links/references
1. Malone, T and Lepper, MR (1987). Making learning fun, in: R Snow and M Farr (eds), Aptitude, Learning and Instruction: Conative and Affective Process Analyses, pp223-253. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ
2. Futurelab book review: James Gee's 'What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy'
3. Futurelab article: Interview with Marc Prensky
4. BBC article - Violent imagery 'harms children': news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4275131.stm
5. Futurelab handbook: Designing educational technologies with users
DigiPlay website: les1.man.ac.uk/cric/digi/digisems4.htm
March 2005
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