Game-based learning (#GBL) is the idea that we can (a) identify and articulate the elements which make a game successful, compelling, and fun, and (b) apply those elements in our practice of teaching and learning.
What this is not: Oregon Trail or Number Munchers. Now, I loved playing those two games, but in all honesty, they were simply fun games which happened to involve some of the same content as math and history classes. They weren't designed to teach - and I certainly didn't learn from them! Neither of these games would have been in any way appropriate as the basis for a curriculum.
It's all about structuring content to maximize engagement and motivation - and primarily intrinsic motivation (though careful use of extrinsic motivation has a place too!). We have no problem acknowledging that we want to achieve these goals when we teach. But it's a leap for a lot of us to realize that using gameful practices is a realistic and authentic means to do so.
I recommend
- Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6538-7
- McGonigal, Jane (2011). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. ISBN 978-1-5942-0285-8
- Prensky, Mark (2001). Digital Game-Based Learning. ISBN: 978-1-5577-8863-4
Of course, so much of the ongoing and contemporary scholarship on this topic is happening in primarily electronic media. For my colleagues who are a bit more comfortable with, and open to, taking seriously research conducted outside the forest of dead trees, try some of these:
- The Principles Behind Game-Based Learning
- KQED blog: 10 Surprising Truths About Video Games and Learning
- TED Talk: Tom Chatfield on 7 Ways Games Reward the Brain
- MIT's Education Arcade
- NYU Game Center
Have fun!
Gerol, I appreciate your thoughtful and considerate analysis of games and how they reflect on learning, but I have to disagree with you on one point: I learned A LOT from Oregon Trail!
ReplyDeleteFor reference, I'm in my mid-thirties. I played Oregon Trail in elementary school and junior high. Despite the fact there was at least some historical record to base the game upon, let's assume for a second that the original Oregon Trail didn't accurately reflect the day-to-day habits of 19th century American pioneers. What did it teach a young, 20th century public school student? It taught me that sometimes you shoot a buffalo instead of a squirrel. That sometimes you spend your money right, and sometimes your financial decisions lead to ruin. That sometimes you get across the river, and sometimes your oxen drown. Sometimes you get to Willamette Valley, sometimes you shut the goddamn computer off and reset.
In other words, sometimes you score something that helps you and yours out for a while, be it a job or contract, and sometimes you're working the hourly crew, with just enough to feed you. Sometimes you spend your money in a good way and it's there to support you later, but sometimes you blow it on booze and video games and in the end you're back at Mom n'Dad's. Sometimes you can make all the right decisions, but you've got no control over fate & life, and you just get wasted in the deluge of it.
Which makes the last analogy so important. Some people get to their Willamette Valley of prosperity and happiness. Some people don't. I'd argue most people don't. But in Oregon Trail, you could always shut the computer off and try again. The reset button kept open the option of a future, that despite your past mistakes and disappointments, you could ALWAYS try again.
These days, there are a lot of people that say we need a reset button. There are an equal amount that say the hell with a reset button. Everyone is on a journey to their own Willamette Valley, but a LOT of people don't get there. As a society, what do we want to say? That only the people who shot straight, made the right financial decisions, and were lucky enough to get across the river, deserve happiness and prosperity? If that's the case, there's a shoreful of folks on the eastern riverbank that probably never even got their oxen, despite making all the right financial decisions.
The answer is in history. The pioneers that failed died in the plains. But is that an acceptable answer in 21st century USA, with all our medical advancements, incredible wealth, and capacity for compassion? No, it's not. We can do better than the generations that came before us, at less expense, and greater return. The reset button doesn't have to be a golden ticket, in fact, it shouldn't be. But the reset button should get the weakened recovered, keep the desperate out of harm, and help the determined educate their way forward.
As for you, Gerol, you owe a debt to Oregon Trail. Don Rawitsch, inventor of the original Oregon Trail, used it as a way to teach about history, and involve his students in a way that immersed them in the struggles of 19th century pioneers. And this was way back in 1971! This probably doesn't qualify as "curriculum" as we know it, but 40+ years later, you are doing the same to teach people about the immortal value of philosophy.
Oregon Trail isn't enough for a college course? Probably. But you would be remiss in saying that you learned nothing from blasting pixelated squirrels to feed your caravan. Dungeons & Discourse IS the 21st century heir apparent to Rawitch's original game.
~Dungeon Todd
The heir apparent, eh? Big shoes...
DeleteI do take your point about the lessons available to learn within *any* gameplay environment. And the analogies you draw to our attention are serious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention to issues of socio-economic injustice in contemporary societies. As someone committed to ideals of the public good as a robust collective moral obligation for our nation, I agree that a game like OT can be a great platform to engage students in thinking about things WAY beyond the fictional game narrative.
My original message was a bit more modest - and, in a roundabout way, ultimately compatible with your point. The power of technologies changes with their respective times and cultures. Daguerreotype was truly a powerful and revolutionary tech of the 19th century. But that's changed, and we wouldn't any longer call it powerful or revolutionary in the same ways. (Implying nothing further, in this conversation, about any new ways it may be valuable.)
Simply put: technologies tend to have a shelf-life.
I would agree that Rawitsch's use of OT to teach was immersive and engaging, and probably did have some fantastic uses. I would, at the same time, claim that the tech which OT represents has passed its shelf-life - at least for being powerful in that way.
Maybe D&Dis can step up to the role in the current day. (I certainly intend to do my best to make it so!) And maybe D&Dis will engage a generation of students to immerse themselves in some evocative and creative environments for playing out the eternal philosophical ideas in an interactive narrative form. And that will be awesome.