Food for Thought: game-based learning and pedagogy

‘A Modest Proposal’, IGDA’s Culture Clash column for April 2008, Matt Sakey writes on game-based learning and education from a culture-orientated perspective. He discusses the potential of game-based learning and highlights the need for the education system to be redesigned to focus on experiential learning. However, he also states that games fit into the experiential design and that they could teach all aspects of learning.

“Experts say that games can’t completely replace other forms of pedagogy. Maybe not, if you simply take games and try to stuff them up the current model for education, a model based mostly on rote memorization through lecture, and less on interpretation and application. You’re told that Animal Farm is a commentary on Socialism, told where Bhutan is. Games don’t work that way; they are experiential. Players draw their own conclusions from the context, which is why games couldn’t totally replace the system as it exists today. Redesign the model to focus on experiential learning, though, and games would be a perfect fit. Of course, the games would have to be very well-designed.”

Even if the games were very well-designed I believe there is a need for a teacher figure to guide discussions on the learning content with the class as a whole. Reflection and discussion is an important part of learning and understanding. In ‘A Grand Proposal’, Daniel Livingstone also comments on this article stressing the need for reflection and discussion.

“In fact, numerous reports on game based learning (several I’ve mentioned before on this blog, apologies for not linking to them just now – I may return and add the links later) emphasize the need for teachers to facilitate reflection when games are used in class. Why? Because in most cases playing the game alone is not enough to make students think things through.”

MMORPGs in Education: Reflection

The following is a summary of responses from an expert panel over three rounds of a Delphi study conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. This is the fifth of six thematic summaries I plan to share on this blog.

In a final consensus check survey, the participating experts indicated a very high level of consensus with this summary:

Summary of Participant Responses
Theme 5
ReflectionWith the guidance of an educator and with dedicated, structured, and frequent debriefing time, MMORPGs might also offer an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning and problem-solving strategies. Educators might help students to realize the correlation between their in-game strategies and real world scenarios they might encounter. Something not unlike an after-action-review might be used for this purpose, but clear procedures for reflecting on skills such as the 21st century skills mentioned in the previous session are not well established in traditional education. Many existing techniques might be borrowed from other fields. New tools for capturing in-game experiences and representing them for later reflection may need to be developed as well.

Due to the potentially global nature of an MMORPG, they might also provide an opportunity for students and teachers to reflect on cultural differences of others playing the game. However, it might be difficult to reflect on real world cultural differences in an online game when many of those differences would not be apparent in the game-world and the players avatars. It may also be difficult for many teachers to facilitate reflections on cultural differences, particularly without exposure to different cultures themselves. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned about culture is that people are more alike than different, and this can be learned in an online game environment as students engage in play with others from around the world and their cultural differences do not deter them from enjoying – and succeeding within – the game together.

Debriefing may reduce the scalability, increase the cost of implementation, increase the time required, and limit the independent use of an MMORPG for educational purposes, especially if conducted in a face-to-face format. However, such potential drawbacks do not outweigh the benefits of having students reflect on their game play. Without such explicit reflection activities the educational value of playing an MMORPG might largely be lost. To mitigate these concerns, though, games can be designed to scaffold reflection and to automate it to some extent. Even independent use of an MMORPG might include a report back to a teacher or peers.

The following are a selection of significant dissenting opinions and/or final comments that members of the expert panel made in response to this final summary:

“I’m concerned that this doesn’t mention the difficulty in having instructors who can provide the reflection guidance needed (in general, not just cultural).”

“Reflection is the most important part of any educational aspect of a game and I think you’ve captured it well. However, I do think that in-game reflection would be valuable because it would of necessity break into game play.”

I am interested in additional feedback from readers of this blog. What is your level of consensus with this summary? Are there any points you might want to elaborate on – or more importantly, disagree with? Please leave a comment.

Author: Mark Wagner, Educational Technology and Life Blog,  26th February 2008