Games based learning is a hot subject right now. Listening to James Paul Gee and Nichola Whitton speaking about video games has me thinking about the impact of games on education. How for example, can we justify the inclusion of computer games in school lessons and what benefits might they accrue for learners? How can games be integrated into the education, and in what ways might learning from games be assessed?
Gee's work focuses on the processes of learning through games playing, and highlights the active control gamers can exert, as well as other benefits including meta-level thinking, identity manipulation and discovering knowledge about oneself. For me, by far the most powerful principle Gee has identified is the psychological moratorium (PM) - an adaptation of a concept originally proposed by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. For Gee, the PM represents the capability of a game to suspend reality, so that the gamer can go where they wish, be whomever they want to be, and perpetrate acts for which there is no lasting consequence. Putting aside the less desirable outcomes of this principle for one moment, we can see that the suspension of reality can encourage students to take greater risks, pose themselves problems that would otherwise be unrealistic, and explore terrains and ideas that would be virtually inconceivable outside of a video game.
Nichola Whitton's work overlaps considerably with the principles Gee identifies. She presents a 'magic circle' within which all kinds of scenarios are possible within games based learning. With video games, students can make believe and be someone else, through the avatar affordances of the technology. The game psychologically transports them to other places. They are able to take risks and experiment, and learn through failure, strengthening their skills and knowledge continually. They can make any number of choices, all of which have different consequences. Trying to beat one's own previous best score is an addictive aspect of many video games, and keeps the learner engaged. This leads not only to self testing but also embraces ipsative forms of assessment, where students measure their performance against their own previous achievements.
There are other elements of gaming such as the social connections and competition features of games that make playing so appealing. We have also to consider some of the subversive elements of games based learning, such as hacking and modding that appeal to so many gamers.
All of these are very powerful motivators. They are an important part of youth culture and teachers can no longer ignore computer games or believe they are irrelevant to education. They are staring us in the face and won't go away. Our challenge now is to discover how we can fully harness the power of these kinds of engagement and the potential for new forms of assessment in formalised settings. Each of these possibilities make learning through games playing highly motivational, but beyond this, they also enable learners to explore new ideas, reflect deeply in their actions, and ultimately, they are fun.
Photo by Sherif Salama on Flickr
#GBL - the suspension of reality by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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