January 2006 — Features
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Game On!
• Coaching provides assistance to help solve problems and move through a game.• “Accelerated” (multisensory) learning incorporates memory techniques and a see-hear-do approach that appeals to multiple learning styles. The strategy has proven to be effective in learning foreign languages (see www.acceleratedlearning.com).
• Selecting from learning objects allows the user to link independent content modules and certain interactions on demand for a customized experience.
• Intelligent tutoring enables specific feedback based on student errors.
• Mastery learning can be built into DGBL, which is in line with the NCLB accountability movement. Although some games allow players to choose a level of difficulty, many contain levels organized by graduated difficulty in which players can’t progress to the next level without mastering the current level.
Selecting Game Types
Games can roughly be categorized as Action, Adventure, Fighting, Puzzle, Role-playing, Simulation, Sports, and Strategy. Choosing the appropriate type depends on the content to be learned and/or mental processes to be developed (see “Choosing the Right Game,” left). Several other variables must also be considered, including:
• Students’ age, characteristics, gender, competitiveness, and previous gaming experience.
• The game’s target age level, which indicates the likelihood that students will understand the rules and possess the necessary motor skills for playing by them.
• Special needs. Some kids with disabilities might be left out. Visually handicapped students, for example, may require enlarged text (and some traditional students need to work alone, rather than in groups).
• Gender and racial diversity. In its choice of characters, language, or situations, does the game offend or slight any particular group of students?
• Number of players. How many students can play at one time? Will too many be left sitting on their hands?
• The role of the teacher. Passive observer or active participant?
Teachers should also get a few other questions settled before deciding if a game is right for their students:
It’s not whether you win or lose—or is it? For classroom use, the nature of DGBL would suggest that games involving strategies to win are preferred over those involving luck. But the drive to win may obscure the educational intent, as well as alienate less-capable students. Teachers may be interested in determining if the game allows all to win, and whether or not winning comes at the expense of others.
Will it ever end? The duration of the game is a crucial consideration. At one end of the game spectrum are “persistent-state” games, which typically are role-playing games that support thousands of players at a time, go on forever, and don’t require all players to play at the same time; then there are “session” games, which exist for only as long as players are playing; when the game is won, players start over.
Fraction Track (www.standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/chap5/5.1) is one such session game. It illustrates that digital games do not have to be elaborate. The game is listed among e-examples in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (yers are playing; when the game is won, players start over.
Fraction Track (www.standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples). Microsoft’s Rise of Nations (www.microsoft.com/games/riseofnations) requires teachers to help students relate their game-based insights about complex systems to school content, but such dialog provides opportunity for reflection and the linking of knowledge across several disciplines.
How hard is it? The difficulty level of a game and the time required to learn it can interfere with its effectiveness. In discussing the results of his study using Civilization III in a high school history class, Kurt Squire, a professor of educational communications and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in “Changing the Game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom” (www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&=82) that the game “takes hundreds of hours to master and can be played dozens of ways; players can win through military, scientific, economic, political, or cultural superiority (and most likely a combination of each).” Many students found the game too complex, overwhelming, and just too difficult. It appealed to students for whom traditional education was not working, rather than to students who were doing well in the class. This latter group had difficulty accepting how success on a game unit would help them pass college entrance exams or perform well in a college classroom.
A Question of Value
The academic, the game developer, and the student will each have a different perspective on the value of DGBL. Graduate courses for K-12 educators have taken up the debate, such as the one I have personally taught on technology skills for virtual teachers. However, the decision on whether to use DGBL as an instructional strategy must be made according to the needs of students. Stakeholders such as parents, administrators, and teachers will want assurances that games played during class time are clearly linked to learning subject matter and not usurped as toys by students. As with any new learning methodology or technology, appropriate staff development must be provided for integrating DGBL into the curriculum.
While research has shown that games have considerable success when designed to address a given problem or teach a certain skill, their value outside of the game-playing scenario remains an important, undecided question for researchers. Even with acceptance or proof of broader value, educators may need to call on their differentiated instruction practices to provide alternatives for students who are not engaged by a particular game.
Ultimately, however, problems with integrating DGBL into schools are more systemic. Squire believes that “even if you had the ideal game…it is not certain that such a game could even survive in today’s educational environment as our contemporary educational systems do not know how to sustain a curricular innovation built on the properties that make games compelling.”
Systemic change might begin to take shape when school administrators, pre-service teachers, and in-service teachers are awakened to uses for DGBL that meet their own needs. Such games as School Tycoon (www.download.com/School-Tycoon/3000-10189_4-10335750.html), simSchool (www.simschool.org), and the aforementioned STAR Sportsmanship can help pave the way. Once teachers experience firsthand the unique mix of learning and fun that games can offer, they’ll be more secure in making them available to their students.
Patricia Deubel is an education consultant and adjunct faculty member in the graduate School of Education at Capella University in Minneapolis. She is also the developer of Computing Technology for Math Excellence at www.ct4me.net.
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