How Effective are Games at Teaching?
There is debate about whether video games are teaching children skills and values that will help them and the necessary presupposition for this debate is that video games are effective at teaching the skills and attitudes they convey. Evidence suggests that this may be the case. In the case of content-specific skills, computer tutoring programs have been found to be more effective than classroom instruction, but not as effective as human tutors (Kelly, 2005). Kelly (2005) concludes that this artificial tutor is twice as effective as typical classroom instruction, but only about half as effective as good human tutors. A literature review conducted by Gorrell (1992) found that computer simulations were effective at teaching procedural knowledge but not higher order thinking, and that learners enjoy learning through computer simulations.
Studies have also demonstrated the ability of computer simulations to improve attitudes. In one study, students were found to be more motivated to learn difficult symbolic language after experiencing a phenomenon visually through a 3-D simulation (Trindade, Fiolhais, & Almeida 2002). A Pentagon marketing survey (as cited in Quirk, 2006) found that thirty percent of young people who played the Army's America's Army video game had a more positive impression of the Army than before they played. This video game has become a powerful marketing tool for this reason.
A meta-analysis (Vogel et al., 2006) of thirty-two studies found that interactive simulations and computer games were more effective at teaching concepts, in both instructional value and motivation than traditional classroom instruction. This held true for both males and females of ages ranging from elementary school to college.
On the Intersection of Learning and Fun
Because video games are an appealing leisure activity for many youth and they contain features that help players develop a sense of increased mastery, some theorists have called for video games to be incorporated into education (Aldrich, 2005; Oblinger, 2004). However, in certain cases, this pursuit of fun actually hurts students' learning. For example, video games can be considered miseducative when the learning goals are not clear or when an alternative teaching method is a better way of presenting information. But when goals of the game and the learning goals match such that the player is engaging in metacognitive practices, playing video games could be both educative and fun.
Aldrich (2005) notes the teachers' dilemma. He explains that teachers, noticing how bored students are in their classroom (and conversely, how engaged they are in video games when they get home), desire to make their classrooms more like a computer game. To some extent, this is a vain ambition. Children enjoy playing video games because they are not school; they can revel in the pointlessness and fantasy. When students do not choose the games they play, when they are aware that the games serve an educational purpose, and when they are asked to reflect on the games or are graded on their participation, the “fun” value goes down.
This may point to a deeper problem of trying to bring fun into education. Play, as defined in this paper, is self-motivated, governed by fantasy rules, and removed from everyday life. Learning is more akin to work. Work requires purpose, demands goals, takes effort, engenders frustration, and bears fruit. Pursuing fun is like pursuing happiness. Happiness is elusive when pursued for its own sake, but often comes to us in pursuit of meaningful goals. Similarly, fun in the short term does not always equate to long-term joy.
There is a middle ground where fun and learning intersect. This state of coexistence between work and play has been described as “flow” by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow is described as the psychology of optimal experiences, characterized by clear goals, appropriate challenge level, loss of self into the focus on activity, distorted sense of time, personal control, and intrinsic rewards. In this description of flow, we can see that someone might be having fun and also learning. For example, a small child engaged in fantasy play is also learning about adult roles at the same time. The description of flow also matches the experiences of people who play video games. One gamer remarks, “If you're absorbed in the game and you like it [gaming] oftentimes you find that hours have gone by and didn't even realize that much time has passed. (F. Curry, personal communication, October 27, 2007).
In judging whether playing video games can be both fun and educative, determination is largely dependent on the interaction of the player and the context. The medium of video games, at its core, is simply graphics accompanied by a hyperlinked narrative, and an underlying mathematical system. As such, the final format can evolve in a hundred directions. Video games may be good quality or poor quality, just as words on a page may be transformed into a novel or an advertising jingle. A video game may take the form of a chess tutorial, a language instruction program, a medieval fantasy, or an instructional course in cop killing. Thus, video games and their effects cannot be judged as a whole.
Similarly, different players will respond differently to different titles. For example, while most people who play violent video games might display aggression, many will not, just as many people who watch crime dramas or read Stephen King novels will not become violent. Instead of asking, “Are video games fun and educative?” the questions that should be asked are: “In what contexts and with which students are video games fun and educative?”, “To what extent do players examine the values in the video games and question them?” and “In what contexts do skills learned in video games transfer to other areas?” These questions provide a basis for future research into how children relate to video games.
About the Author
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Jill M. Olthouse is a graduate assistant and doctoral candidate in Gifted
Education at the University of Toledo. Her interests are giftedness,
composition studies, and educational technology.
Email Jill M. Olthouse |
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