Video Game Education

 Case Study #1: Weeks 2-3

On the Helpfulness of Statistics and Good Sourcing

Currently, our culture is in the midst of the postmodern period. One of the characteristics of postmodernism includes embracing technology. Children watch television, play on Iphones, cue up search engines on computers, and play video games, either at home or at friends’ houses. Kids are exposed to video games at an early age, the lure of fantasy realms and problem solving missions an inescapable draw. Even if the games seem pointless to parents, most simulate real-world problems and let the user solve them through the means of trial and error. Because they are already consuming video game time outside of school, it would not be a stretch to integrate digital games into the schoolhouse curriculum, and would be beneficial for both the students and the educational system.

I remember playing The Oregon Trail in grade school and not only enjoying it immensely, but learning, with my classmates, from the digital activity while having fun. The students, including myself, got into it, glued to the computer screen, little eyes moving rapidly across the inventory list. The game provided many learning opportunities as well as critical thinking objectives, like deciding whether to float, avoid, or forge a river depending on its speed and depth; quite impressive calculations for a fourth grader.

There are several benefits that can spring from video games being used for educational purposes. An obvious benefit lies in the fact that if a child is excited or interested by an activity, that child will do better at performing that activity. In this case, if kids enjoy playing video games they are more likely to succeed at a school activity that involves playing a video game. Also, “games can motivate passive students to contribute more than they would in a traditional learning environment” (Annetta). Shy or otherwise socially disabled children do not have to worry about speaking out in front of a class or being made fun of for performing a task incorrectly. Video games allow students to mask their identity with a fictional digital one, allowing the children to make mistakes through trail and error without real time repercussion, which motivates the students to try more combinations of answers and research different methods of solving without worry of being embarrassed by answering wrongly.

Video games in education is a topic that has been thought over and researched for years. For instance, in 2003, “a movement was started for using video games in teaching and training…known as serious games” (Annetta). This movement studied several different curriculum-based digital games and the responses of the students and educators involved with play time. An example of one such a game is Immune Attack, a human biology game that has the user fight bacterial and viral infections by training immune cell troops for combat. Another instance includes Wolf’s Den, an interactive game that allows both students and instructors to create an avatar, perform classroom activities, and talk amidst each other during real time via online communication. Students can enter a scientific lab and test water samples through a microscope, using chemicals that would be potentially dangerous in a real life situation. A game like the examples stated can also reduce tuition costs for both the school and the students by cutting out text book costs for the subject covered.

A study was conducted in Athens, Greece by two esteemed researchers for the Journal of Educational Technology and Society that delved into the question of video games in education. The interesting thing about their study lies in the fact that the two researchers used off-the-shelf games for their basis of analysis and not curriculum-based games. Using a sample group of 59 junior high school students (one control group of 29 and an experimental group of 30), aged 13-14 years old, the researchers first asked background questionnaires about their opinions on school and, separately, video games. After this, the study separated the children and had them each perform a series of curriculum tasks, the experimental group doing so via a commercial video game, namely, Sims 2: Open for Business.

After the experiment, students in the experimental group not only fulfilled the activity criteria but showed an improvement in performance and “indicated successful engagement in the evaluation of preformed actions’ outcomes” by being able to choose from several alternate paths to complete a task assigned, while the students not involved with gaming had only one child that “managed to develop more than one alternative solution to the given problem” (Panoutsopoulos and Sampson). To cap off the experiment, the researchers had the children involved fill out another questionnaire regarding their opinions on the activities they had just preformed. In this poll, 55.2% of students reported that the integration of The Sims helped them understand mathematical concepts taught therein. The other 44.8% did not see a benefit from the video game, but were not confused or hindered by it. The statistical differences are apparent, however, the validity of the evidence is too vague to use for the base of a full-hearted claim.

Off-the-shelf games, not meant to teach children in a classroom, have been seen effective in relaying curriculum objectivity and should therefore be researched further. If “leisure” games help students to perform and learn their schoolhouse tasks, games designed intentionally for students must have an even greater effect.

References:

Panoutsopoulos, H., & Sampson, D. G. (2012). A Study on Exploiting Commercial Digital Games into School Context.

Educational Technology & Society, 15 (1), 15–27.

Theory Into Practice, 47:229–239, 2008

Copyright © The College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University

ISSN: 0040-5841 print/1543-0421 online

DOI: 10.1080/00405840802153940