Videogames and Education

Schools emphasize the memorizing of acts, concepts, and ideas . The context is removed from the world and placed into an abstract, formal concept that can be applied generally to various situations. Learners who memorize a concept are only taking on a piece of the world. By limiting what a student can learn, educators are actually doing the opposite of what they meant to do. Instead of creating critically-thinking students, they have supported an environment that encourages students to accept facts as they are stated without an understanding of the contexts that they would be used within. Rather than enabling students, schools treat students as vessels ready to accept abstract concepts.



Becoming embedded into a game allows students to understand tools and perform the acts of a professional within different fields. Students are not only sitting in class, they are making decisions and understanding the consequences. Students are able to internalize what it is they are learning because they become a part of that world and learn the different types of skills from each profession, what they can do, and how they can work together. This deep, value-laden learning transfers well to school-based skills and understandings. From Gee's (2004) perspective, there is a difference between engaging someone in a complex system meaning and simply telling them, as facts, about that system–a person that is engaged is actively participating in a system. If teachers are just giving facts to students, the students are receiving those facts in pieces but may not be able to make a whole concept. Students will not feel engaged with the system and are quite separate from it. If a student understands how words are applied in a situation, they potentially understand the circumstances. Participating in a complex system allows the user to feel as if it is real and what they are doing is contributing to the goals of that system. Students become more motivated to become active participants in their learning.

Digital simulations of worlds that are “played” – students could act within a simulation and find a win state (a state that can be found through learning and, ultimately, be won). “Players must carefully consider the design of the world and consider how it will or will not facilitate specific actions they want to accomplish their goals”. (Gee, 2003) When understanding the game, a student understands the rules upon which the game is based. For example, … Gee references situated actions and situated meaning, referring to the fact that words have different meanings, and, at times, very specific meanings, based on the situations that are used in. While playing a game, people acquire situated meaning for words – meanings that they can apply in actual context for action and problem solving. Gee and other scholars see this as something that highlights the problem of traditional schools. Schools present abstract concepts without regard to where the concepts were important. They over-generalize (and simplify) them in to facts that are supposed to be easily digested and understood by all students.

Students understand the concept within the situations presented in games. They can also learn how to use it in other applications. This situative perspective considers learning environments as an activity (Barab & Plucker, 2002; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno, 1997). Learners interact with other learners, the material, the information, and resources available within the environment. Words are not just the facts or isolated ideas pulled from the meaningful context that they originated. Gaming worlds become something greater – they allow students to become part of a community of practice. The activities that take place within the learning environment are important because they not only teach the content but allow the student to practice what they are learning and they are constantly rethinking and designing new ways of understanding it. With practice comes the motivation of success and failure - the opportunity to revise and try different outcomes. Students will be able to make sense of the content that they are learning and apply the learning in different ways that go beyond learning a single concept.

Students have the opportunity to participate in a new world, that when properly created, allows them to try on new identities and roles that would not be available because of financial reasons or time constraints (Barab, Ingram-Goble, & Gresalfi, in press; Gee, 2003; Turkle, 1994). There is no way that any one person has the time to go out and experience every job, visit museums, and tour the world and discover the different cultures and types of people. Games can give students these experiences at a much lower cost while being time-efficient. Games also have the potential to manipulate the environment of these virtual places such that they highlight and make pedagogically useful experiences more likely (Barab & Dede, 2007). Students understand and experience the concepts within the context, so that they find meaning without losing the connection between the world and the abstract ideas that are being presented to them.

Students can grapple with learning issues together and are supported by the environment, their teachers, the community, and the tools that they are given. Students learn to think as professionals rather than individuals working with an abstract concept (Steinkuehler). The problems that occur with a student learner can often be solved in different ways by utilizing the various skills that comes from working within a gaming environment. The problems presented in an educational format are ill-defined, context bound, and real-world qualities. The relationship between the solver and the environment can create different solutions and opportunities. Games allow more opportunities for feedback to students and allow them to see various outcomes to their decisions. Students can be accountable for their ways of thinking and are pushed to think outside their realm of comfort. They can even adopt new ways of addressing old problems as they learn new tools.

As a student has a greater understanding of her skills, she is able to transfer that knowledge to the next set of problems, using the experience that she gained as a tool. Transfer is an "advantageous effect of learning in one situation upon learning in a later situation" (Greeno, 1989). Educational gaming allows people to engage in other professions or lifestyles, get experience, and understand the ways and thinking. People become the system that they are engaging and act within a system while seeing and thinking of it as a system, not just random events. Students develop an understanding that has a foundation in meaningful activity.

Games help students start to integrate “knowing, ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of caring” (Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, Gee). Students are no longer vessels that we stuff information. Students become active learners and experts. They learn by playing the game – they are learning by working together. The community of learners work together to find what questions are important to the students and ways to try and answer them. They come to understand the value of knowledge rather than trying to complete a task for a grade. From this community emerges a culture in which an individual’s skills and identities are important.

Gamers should no longer be stereotyped as single players living in the mom’s dark basement (Citing the Pew Report would be good here). Gamers today are social creatures that have learned to interact on many levels. In game, they can socialize through chat and emails. Some gamers will help others learn new skills and theory-crafters will participate online through fan-sites, discussion forums, and guild sites. Students are able to engage the information together as a class, with their teacher, and with the larger, learning community. They can work cooperatively on projects and have the ability to work with students outside of their normal classroom. This type of interaction fosters a feeling of community and students can develop shared values about their education. The Pew Research Center (Roberts 2006 ) recently reported that students see gaming as a beneficial social activity and “a major component of their overall social experience.” The study found that while many students had encountered negative social experiences, they felt that they were able to stand up to the other players and ask them to stop the inappropriate behaviors. Furthermore, most students felt that gamers were more often helpful and generous players rather than the stereotypical aggressive, bullying type.

Gaming also helps students try on new and powerful identities. Understanding critical features and the conditions that enable or disable a student from fully participating in mathematics may help us move toward equality. For example, in a non-gaming environment, Gutstein created a series of mathematic projects that related to social equality and positive, social identities. By helping children gain a sense of agency, they were able to take up the math problems as their own and propose creative solutions to solving them. “Educators working toward an equitable and just society can help students develop not only a sophisticated understanding of power relations in society but also the belief in themselves as conscious actors in the world” (Gutstein, 2003). One student, after understanding data based arguments, went to his city councilman to discuss why there was a larger amount of liquor stores in impoverished neighborhoods, like his own, in comparison to more affluent neighborhoods, who had lesser liquor stores. As students come to understand their power within mathematics, they can use this power and feel like they can make changes in the world. Students could “use their real-world race, class, culture, and gender as strategic resources if and when they please…but in ways that do not force anyone into pre-set racial, gender, cultural, or class categories.” (Gee, 2004) People can share around a common goal and use their cultural or social differences as strengths. Both Gee and Gutstein share similar attitudes that learning within situations that students can relate to make the student more powerful, beyond gender and racial restraints, and games can make this possible in a classroom context.

Videogames have the potential to change education and it should be embraced as a new model of learning. Games can level the social and cultural differences by realizing that which makes individuals unique is strength rather than a weakness. Learning is more powerful when students find meaning in their experiences. Games allow students to experiment with their identities and explore the world in many different ways that are safe and accepted. They become part of the culture and the community of learning. Games create a greater motivation to learn. Students become a part of developing the ways that the community practices through meaningful activity.