Accepting Games Into Education

Thanks to Ludology.org for pointing to a Chronicle Of Higher Education article discussing the emerging use of games as an academic subject and educational tool. Although there are sceptics, such as David Breneman from the University Of Virginia, who says: "Horsing around with these games might teach problem solving, but you don't learn anything about the world", it's suggested that educators could modify existing games: "An instructor who knows something about games or computers could customize The Sims or Civilization for a study of, say, Roman history", but that few game designers truly understand what makes a game educational: "People seem to think that anything you click on is a game... designers come out with products that have a shellac of quizzing on top of a game."

Gaming by definition..

[kmak]

Is to let people have fun, to let us escape life, to let us release stress, etc...

Can you do all that and learn at the same time? Sure, but it won't be easy... one thing that comes to mind is the "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago" series.. it was great, and you learn Geography at the same time..

But it will take some effort on the game designer's behalf.. and they really can't expect big payoffs (maybe.. but probably not..)

But computers are ubitquitious nowadays, so we'll see..

Re:Gaming by definition..

[ChiefArcher]

Not a huge payoff.. but the payoff is definately there... Most school systems tend to be current on their licensing... I remember back when I was in school.. we had to have a license for every MECC games out there (oregon trail anyone?)... Schools (as broke as they are) still pay money for software.

But unfortunately, more group discounts tend to occur in the school settings.... so I think you tend to have more copies of the software out there at a lower price....

ChiefArcher

Games as University

[GreenKnightPublishin]

Green Knight Publishing has taken this challenge to heart for the Matter of Britain -- the legends of King Arthur.

We publish King Arthur Pendragon and Pendragon Online, games about the myth, history and literature of Arthurian Britain.

Pendragon Online is under development right now.

Consider it a High School to Post-Graduate level historical, literary or scientific research project, Internet drama school, or what have you.

We're drawing from Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte D'Arthur," the French "Vulgate

*stares off into the distance....*

[miruku]

i remember learning how to tell the time and what materials were conductors or insulators in fun school 3 on my amiga 500 when i was 10. man, those programs were a great helping hand..

So when are we going to see...

[autojive]

So when are we going to see the MathBlaster Quake mod? :-D

Re:So when are we going to see...

[Tragedy4u]

Hey thats actually a great idea! You need to subtract how many bullets you use up. Add how many shots it takes to blow off that demons head. Determine what percentage of armor you have left. Calculate the blast radius of your grenades and the trajectory of how you throw them etc etc etc...

I could actually see this happening! ;)

Educational Games

[darkmayo]

All I remember is the good ole StickyBear.

This is kind of old news...

[kasparov]

Didn't these people ever play Oregon Trail [classicgaming.com] or the Carmen Sandiego [carmensandiego.com] games? I mean, come on! I'm 26 years old and I rememember playing these games in elementary school. And (I know, it's not a game--but it did have a cute turtle) who can forget LOGO [mit.edu] programming? Tons of fun for everyone.

Sim Marcus Aurelius

[Bonewalker]

I like this concept as an additional way of learning, not as the only tool in use.

The article mentioned something though that could be really cool and promote a better understanding of history, or culture, or what have you. A Sims Roman-Style game could let you play the part of an emperor, government official, gladiator, or peasant in the Roman world. From there, you could make the same types of decisions for your sim character based on historical data. And, of course, you aren't limited to just Roman history, any and all major cultures could be recreated. Sounds fascinating to me.

But, another poster did present one valid problem...you would have to convince the game company they could make money off this deal, or they wouldn't put the time and effort into it that it would really require in order to be fun and educational.

Games in school

[1nihilist1]

Mathville?
Anyone remember that?

You learned plenty about real-life and mathematics. You went grocery shopping, and would have to calculate the value of your order. You would have to figure out the amount of materials you needed for different construction projects. You could go to a fair and play games that involved math. It was fun and the only point to the game was to upgrade your method of transportation, I think it went: walking - bike - car - hot air balloon - jet - UFO. Something like that.

Then y

Real-life problem solving?

[PurpleFloyd]

The article mentions that games "don't teach real-world problem solving." So what? Most of the stuff taught in the K-12 phase doesn't. You probably remember memorizing your times tables; that wasn't necessarily done with 144 story problems.

While real-world applications of the material are a good thing, not everything can be reduced to "real-world problem solving." Some material is best taught in a drill setting, as old-fashioned as that may be. Games can help make memorization of facts (like those annoying times tables) fun. I still credit games like Math Blaster with helping me learn to do arithmetic quickly.

Re:Real-life problem solving?

[Supero100]

Games teach you tons of real-world problem solving.

Just think of RIGHT NOW as an RPG. Now you're not encumbered by a clunky interface, but the law is less to be trifled with.

The point is that in games, you have fewer options of actions to take, so you have to learn to think within the bounds of the abilities of the system/game. Translate these previously considered problem-solving exercises into real experiences, and you've got to be a better problem-solver. And not just in the sense of:

Oh no, shall I u

Speaking of Roman History...

[FouRPlaY]

Someone once asked me what I knew about the fall of the Roman Empire. I proceded to rattle off everything I remembered from Age Of Empires II. I turned to my friend, who was a Classics major at university, and asked if that was right. He said I had just summed up everything he learned for his degree.

Go video games! =)

GORILLA!

[chrismcdirty]

Does anybody remember Gorilla? I think it was a rip off of some tank war game, but it was fun. Gorilla's standing on opposite sides of a cityscape, throwing explosive banana's at each other, all the while teaching you about physics and the real world.

Okay... maybe crazy, explosive-banana throwing gorillas don't exist in the real world.... yet.

Re:GORILLA!

[Drantin]

Ahh... good old Gorilla Fight from MS with QBasic... ...I always wondered what would happen if one of them tried to eat a banana... or do they now have phobias of bananas and try to find other things to eat... or do they become friends and start eating the bugs off of each others backs?

Re:GORILLA!

[Bluetrust25]

[The timeline]

Because of Gorilla.bas and snake.bas I wasted many of my childhood years trying to make games in QBasic... Ultimately futile of course. Basic was a crappy language for graphics and I was just a little kid, what did I know about programming toolkits and scanners? I tried to plot out my sprites on graphing paper.

The knowledge I did acquire though eventually lead to learning C so I could modify WWIV BBS systems, which I was moderately successful at. I wrote a bunch of cheesy mods that ended

Kids Need The Games

[dirtydiaper]

Public schooled kids dont need the abc's and 123's. They need to know the basics of the railgun and the rocket launcher. There math skills can be taught in the addition of frags not calculators. What every kid needs is a warm childhood of killing other people over the internet!

All I ever needed to know about history...

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

All I ever needed to know about history I learned from Civ2. Anyone else remember that time back in 1987 when Emperor Ghandi told President Alexander the Great to surrender Moscow, noting that his words were "backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

DecafJedi

Rocky's Boots Anyone?

[moldar]

Does anyone else remember Rocky's Boots [warrenrobinett.com]? That was one of the best ways that I learned circuit design - and all at an age of <10!

One of the things I remember was a "secret room" that had an Alligator that would consume the various wires and gates . . .

Now that was a great game!

Edutainment design

[xenocide2]

What I feel is the most important concept for people designing edutainment games is the hierarchy fo learning [sdsu.edu]. This hierarchy is also called "Bloom's Cognative Taxonomy." Rote memorization and drilling are good for immediate responses, but of very little value in the real world. If I remember correctly, its been theorized that knowledge is held longer as it is used in higher and higher level learning.

In the current edutainment area, there are two fields of game design. The first is a quiz and reward system. The student is presented with a quizing system and the actual game. The learning is supposed to come from the quiz. Depending on how well the student does, permission is given to play the game part for a little while, rewarding the player for doing well. It's a basic operant conditioning design. Learning here is very basic rote; trial and error learning.

The second common design is basic skills drilling. Number munchers, math blaster and that little spelling game where words marched down the castle wall and you had to type them before they got to you are all included in this area. Basically the game is timed drilling. The computer is used to encourage and engage the student, as well as to time them. Again the learning here is by trial and error. These sorts of games serve best as a reinforcement/recollection activity. If you know how to multiply numbers then they can help you instantly recall facts.

What I'd like to see more of these days is problem solving game design. This type merges the learning with the gameplay. It encourages experimentation, and extrapolation. Most REAL games operate in this manner these days; edutainment games should focus on making sure the lessons learned reflect reality accurately (or at least as best we know ;)). MIT's games-to-teach project [mit.edu] is such a group of people working on edutainment games. If my friend Kurt is reading this, I'm sure he'll post more about their success stories. I'd just like to mention Hephaestus [mit.edu], a game based on engineering robots (I'm guessing remote controlled rather than AI)from lego like parts, although it looks like they've jumped on the current trends marketing bandwagon and its now an MMORPG of some sort, with energy as currency.

games-to-teach project

[ksquire]

wow, as luck would have it I'm reading. Yeah -- we took our first round of prototypes into schools this spring. We used supercharged! our simulation game to help teach electricity & magnetism physics in a high school and a middle school.

Initial results were quite positive. We found statistically significant differences between groups learning through games and those doing inquiry-based units. We found that most importantly, kids could tell you things like what field lines are and what they're used for

Learning Via Gaming

[Thedalek]

I see a lot of mentions of classical "Edutainment" titles, like Stickybear, Reader Rabbit, Mathblaster, etc. The problem is, no one, then or now, actively chooses to play those games when there are more enjoyable, non-educational alternatives (and face it, most of the alternatives, now and then, are more enjoyable).

The problem is that the designers ask themselves the question "How can we make learning this concept fun?" They should be asking "How can we teach something from this fun activity?"

I have a f

Lessons Learned From Unreal Tournament

[Eberlin]

* Strafing and jumping is a good thing.
* Don't go head on against a rocket launcher.
* Your handgun is no good against a flak cannon
* If you've got 20 health...don't be a hero.
* If you hear a redeemer coming, RUN AWAY

Now tell me how this is irrelevant "Real World" knowledge in an American public school system?

Legion (Beware!)

[tm2b]

One cheap ($20 new) game that tries to do something like this with the Roman Empire called Legion [insidemacgames.com].

Mileage Warning: (Yours may differ) In my brief playing of it, it really sucked, despite the positive review I linked to above. To me, it looked like it overstressed the Civilization model to try to fit Roman history in ways that did were not conducive to good game design (ie, were not fun).

Exciting possiblities

[ReyTFox]

I'm interested in getting into game development, and I think there are plenty of possibilities for making games that motivate people to learn. The key, I think, is in the power of games to be able to abstract the worst, least interesting bits of reality and highlight the fun stuff.

The trick is in presenting the material the right way. I know it's quite doable for physics, history, geography, and related areas - adventure and strategy games make use of that stuff all the time. It's things like higher-level

cellular biology game

[ggwood]

I have thought of a cellular biology game in which you "build" parts of a cell and collect resources from the passing blood. Mitochondria for energy, Golgi apparatus as a warehouse, Lysosomes for digestion of foreign material/junk, etc. When you have enough resources your cell can divide...

I could imagine a strategy game (real time or turn based) where you fend off viruses and maybe zoom around a 3-d view of your cell (as an action part?).

Anyhow, there is really a lot of background material to choose fr