BriceMorrison.com Life is a Game

In my last post on how I outgrew video games, one of the things I mentioned was how games have many substantial capabilities that other media do not.  But what exactly are these capabilities?  Can they be used for anything other than sniping n00bs and defeating winged lizards?

If we want to learn, many students and professors turn to textbooks and workbooks, time tested methods of conveying information for absorption.  When the task is to teach, then we seek out the media that we suppose will serve us best.

But what if textbooks and lectures are no longer the most productive means of instruction?  There are countless known (and still many unknown!) ways that games can improve our lives above and beyond the scope of other media.

Memorization versus mastery

Throughout our lives, we memorize material.  From elementary school through graduate school, students are primarily professional memorizers.  Their job is to take material, facts, and formulas, cram it into their minds until the exam, and then regurgitate it.  Our society has deemed, through a long history with education, that this is the best and most efficient way to communicate information to students and hold them accountable for that information.  Unfortunately, this often results in students seeking only a surface level understanding of a topic, and focusing more on learning the skill of test-taking itself, rather than the skill of understanding the material they’re covering.

I remember having this sad feeling of surface level understanding when I was being taught about derivatives and integrals in calculus.  “So, if you use this, then you can find the slope of the line tangent to the curve,” my teacher said, the writing on the overhead projector reflecting in his glasses.  We all scribbled down our notes and started working a few practice problems.  After a few test runs, I was able to read a problem, plug in the formulas, and figure out the answer.  But I didn’t understand what the answer (or the formulas for that matter) really meant.

When Newton discovered his rules, was he just memorizing them?  “Oh, I remember, if I randomly divide by two, then I will arrive at the answer I want.”  Of course not!  He had a deeper understanding of the formula.  He not only knew the formula, he knew why it existed, how it arrived, and where he could go with it.  He could manipulate it, change it, work with it within its domain.

The most effective courses I took in college (and the most difficult!) were the ones where I was asked not only to memorize how to solve a certain problem, but to master a problem.  I learned when I was asked to take those problem solving skills and apply them to situations I had never seen before, and to do it on the fly.  Such an ability would represent a true mastery of the material.  Teaching this kind of mastery is certainly a worthy goal.

Move up triangle of learning

One method of evaluating the depth of learning is Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning

Many courses in education (not all, but many) require students to only memorize knowledge, gain a basic understanding, and perform some basic applications.  However, a true understanding of a system would also move into the top three layers: analyzing the material (”Why is it like this?”), synthesizing the material with other knowledge (”I can use this with this other coursework here.”), and evaluating the material (”It would be more efficient if the formula has been written like this”).  Being able to state and answer these questions represents a formidable grasp of the material, one that simple memorization from books cannot deliver.

Games as methods of inquiry

Games have the ability to easily lead a player towards a depth of understanding up near the top of the taxonomy triangle.  Since games are closed, invisible, but consistent systems that the player must experiment with and solve, they have the ability to teach the player through to a level of analysis and synthesis quite easily.  A recent article ran in Wired magazine discussing how researchers have noticed that World of Warcraft players use the scientific method to learn the systems of the game (”I think he’s weak to fire…nope, that’s not it.  Anyone else have ideas?”).  If you talk to any player of Microsoft’s Halo game, they’ll not only be able to tell you the buttons to press to shoot your weapon (application), but also the best strategies to get an edge on your opponent (evaluation).  Through quick feedback and an environment for experimentation, these games are apt at providing a deeper level of understanding in a more natural way.

Customize the learning experience

Not every student is the same.  In my home state of Virginia, the state mandates that certain standardized tests must be completed by every single student to ensure progression to the next grade.  One teacher I know expressed his disappointment with the program, claiming that it was like “trying to lump everyone together and lift them over one tiny hurdle.”  While the merits of such an educational assessment program are for another discussion, it is perhaps more readily acceptable to claim that these tests do not do much for the students themselves.  Joe Middleton is one of the few who is helped by the test; he sits on the edge between passing and failing, and so he studies up in order to make the cut.  But the test is of no consequence to Frank Failure, who lags behind miserably, and Jane Genius, who passes so easily she views it as a waste of her time.  The difficulty of the test is too far from their aptitude to be useful to them.

Honing in on a useful difficulty level

Often, the most learning takes place in an environment where students are not competing with one another, but with themselves.  As a person challenges them self to go further than they have gone before, they set their own limits and their own boundaries.

Because of this, a particularly useful aspect of being an interactive medium is that games have the ability to alter themselves based on their player.  Sandbox games such as Will Wright’s Sims or Spore do a wonderful job of this in the entertainment field.  Other games hold the promise of being able to alter the difficulty of a game based on data-mining the player’s performance as he or she interacts with the game (PDF).  The capability of a custom challenge is a valuable one; such malleability could also be used for instructional purposes.

A game that adjusts itself to the player’s actions provides for a better experience.  In the same way that an enemy soldier could use AI move to get a better shot at a player, an instructional game can pick up on cues that a student is either advancing too slowly or too quickly, and adjust accordingly.  If a game program could alter its teaching mechanism in order to give another angle to a faltering student, or accelerate the program at the drop of a hat to move along a gifted student, then the learning experience will be much more worthwhile on an individual basis.

Criticisms of games for learning

Obviously if the advantages of using games for teaching were cut and dry, then we would already see them replacing antiquated curricula.  However the fact is that developing such software is still experimental and thus expensive.  It may be some time before the processes are hammered out and converting ideas to games is as easy as converting ideas to worksheets.

Secondly, moving up the taxonomy of learning is certainly not something only games are capable of.  Talented teachers and wise professors are able to customize their students’ learning experience in a way that demands they develop a deeper understanding of the material.  However the sad fact is that this caliber of instructor is often rare in our school systems.  Perhaps games will provide a way to roll out a meaningful learning experience to the students who don’t have access to the best teachers.

Obviously games won’t be replacing schoolteachers anytime soon.  But the incremental improvements are certainly worth exploring.  Games such as FunBrain have taken the entertainment-slanted first step, but the interesting results don’t occur until we take a few more.

See you again on Sunday,

Brice