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Introduction

You are undoubtedly familiar with some computer games. Indeed, quite likely you have played a variety of computer games. As you read this introductory material and browse this Website, I want you to think about computer games from a teaching and learning point of view.

Educational use of computer games received increased legitimacy in October of 2003 when MIT and others announced an initiative to study educational roles of computer games (Games-to-Teach Project). There is a steadily growing literature in this field. An annotated bibliography is given at the end of this Web page.

What You Might Learn From This Web Page

Reading these materials and browsing some of the linked Websites are learning experiences. But, from a teacher point of view, what might you learn? You know about constructivism—that the learner constructs new knowledge by linking to current knowledge. The "old" knowledge is added to and expanded, or perhaps rejected and reconstructed.

When you read that sentence, perhaps you thought: "Aha, Piagetian theory." If this connection did not occur to you, then perhaps you will wonder what I am talking about, and then use the Web to go look for an answer . In some sense, I am playing a computer game with you and your mind. I could tell you an answer, but I believe that more learning will occur if you take the initiative and do some Web research to find an answer.

The "I could tell you" is one approach to education, and discovering answers for yourself is another approach to education. The "telling" approach to education certainly dominates in our current educational system. In my opinion, our educational system can be considerably improved by a decrease in emphasis on "telling" and an increase in "you can and should discover and figure it out for yourself" approaches to teaching and learning.

So, here is an idea for teaching. Help your students to learn to pose problems, questions, and tasks that they can then solve, answer, carry out through use of their minds and aids to their minds such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Help them to learn that this is a "fun game" that they can play on a computer connected to the Internet. Help them to learn variations on the game, such as posing a challenge to a fellow student.

Increasing Your Repetoire of Teaching Techniques

You know a lot about teaching. Presumably you will interpret the computer games materials I am discussing here in terms of your knowledge and skills in teaching. I hope that you will find some tidbits of information that you will decide is a useful addition to your teaching repertoire.

Here is an example from the some recent reading I did as I worked on this Web page. One of the articles I read talked about computer games and noted:

These results indicate that, although educational computer games can highly engage students in activities involving the targeted educational skills, such engagement, by itself, is often not enough to fulfill the learning and instructional needs of students. This could be due to several reasons.

One reason could be that even the most carefully designed game fails to make students reflect on the underlying domain knowledge and constructively react to the learning stimuli provided by the game. (Conati and Klawe, 2000; see the references at the bottom of this Web page)

I found these two paragraphs interesting because they fit well with knowledge I already have and they extend that knowledge. For example, the second paragraph increased my knowledge of pitfalls in uses of games in education and tied in well with my understanding of constructivism. It also emphasizes an important role of teachers or mentors in a teaching and learning situation.

The two paragraphs fit in well with some similar things I have learned about computer-assisted learning (CAL). In my mind, CAL and learning via computer games are related. I think of some sort of scale, such as the one given below.

This scale represents my first thoughts about tying in what I know about CAL with what I just read about in the Conati and Klaws article. It also fits in well with my knowledge of the need to have authentic assessment that is tied in with authentic content and authentic instruction. So, my mind wandered off on these topics for awhile. Computer games do not tend to be aligned with the standardly taught curriculum content, and I am wondering about how one assesses the learning that occurs as students make use of computer games.

When I am reading academic materials, I often create scales and diagrams that help to summarize or represent key ideas. As I thought about the diagram given above, it occurred to me that many years ago I had memorized that CAL can be divided into categories such as drill and practice, tutorials, simulations, and microworlds. I see that my diagram isn't as good as I first thought. Perhaps the following diagram is a better fit with my past understanding.

What I am doing here is reflecting on my constructivist process, as I add to my knowledge and understanding, and I think about how to communicate this knowledge and understanding.

When I think about CAL and related topics such as the diagram illustrates, I also think about the role of the teachers. Can and will CAL replace teachers? What are roles of teachers as CAL and educational computer simulations, microworlds, and games continue to improve? The Conati and Klaws article makes it clear that the game itself is not sufficient. The desired curriculum-oriented learning is highly dependent on the actions of the teacher.

Incidental Learning

Of course, it is possible that a computer game achieves some desirable learning outcomes independently of a teacher, and perhaps even without the knowledge of the learner.

Rosser has been using video games to train doctors in laparoscopic surgery -- a minimally invasive surgery that uses miniature tools and fiberoptic cameras controlled by joysticks -- since 2001. Rosser has found that students who played video games for more than three hours in one week had 37 percent fewer errors during the procedure, and finished the operation 27 percent more quickly (Xie 2005).

In essence, Rosser has learned that students who had become skilled at certain types of computer games turned out to be especially skillful at laparoscopic surgery. Of course, relatively few computer game players will become laparoscopic surgeons!

Making the Implicit More Explicit

Thinking about this makes me think about what other things a young person might be learning through playing computer games—things that might be useful later in the student's education and career. For example, the game player learns s/he will get better through practice. Each game has a learning curve, and some are steeper than others. For each game, there tends to be some transfer of learning from previously played games.

Let's put this idea together with the ideas from the Conati and Klaws article. One of the important ideas in education is learning to learn and learning about oneself as a learner. With some explicit intervention with a game learner, I can help the learner learn more about him or herself as a learner. In this activity I would undoubtedly slip in a little information about what I have been learning about brain science. For example, I might share my thoughts such as the following:

It is evident that learning goes on as a person plays a game. Initially, a game is apt to be novel, and one's right brain struggles to learn the game and get better at solving the problems of the game. Eventually, patterns are learned by one's left brain, leading to much improved speed and skill at recognizing and solving the problems that occur during game play.

Problem Solving

I then begin to think about some of the big ideas of ICT in education. For me, by far the biggest idea is that ICT provides aids to the human mind/brain and the human body they work to solve problems and accomplish tasks. I have written a number of books about problem solving, and I consider problem solving as the absolutely core concept in ICT.

What roles do computer games play in helping students learn about problem solving? As I think about this, my mind wanders away from my purely academic insights into problems and problem solving to other issues such as the problem each person faces of being entertained or finding activities that stimulate the production of dopamine, resulting in feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. This reminds me of an article that I have just read that mentioned the idea of "flow" and the work of Csikszentmihalyi. Quoting from the article:

A key concept that frequently emerges in the literature is that of ‘flow’, first discussed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). This is summarized by several researchers as “the state in which we are so involved in something that nothing else matters”, which has clear relevance to research into games and play. Debate on the issue of ‘flow’ centres around how the ‘state’ can be created in an individual, and measuring how it might make a person more receptive to receiving, comprehending and using educational-based content and skills (Kirriemuir and McFarlane 2004).

I am a game player. I have experienced "flow" in playing games. I have also experienced "flow" in working with spreadsheets and in certain other academic activities such as teaching and writing. "Flow" is a perfectly respectable academic topic. Do you think your students should learn something about it?

Now, returning to problem solving. Typically, a computer game is based on some sort of environment, scenario, or microworld. Within the environment, the players encounter situations that require action. The action tends to be of a problem-solving, task-accomplishing nature. That is, problem solving is central activity in playing such games.

The problem solving may require very quick analysis and response, or it may allow careful deliberation. I, personally, do not like the quick response ("twitch") games. Mentally and physically, "quick response" does not describe me very well. Thus, I do poorly in quick response games, and that does not stimulate my pleasure centers.

Now, let me drift off the topic a little more. In my youth, I was a very good student in chemistry, math, and physics. This gave me pleasure. Eventually I settled on math as the area in which to take a Ph.D. I was good at math, and doing math well made me feel good. That, in turn, helped to motivate me to put still more time and effort into learning math and doing math.

I think about this and try to relate it both to education in general, and to use of computer games. Some people make a career through computer games and playing computer games. I have a daughter who builds much of her current life around such games. Among other things, she writes books and articles about computer games, she plays games, she serves as a mentor in games and a referee in gaming tournaments, and she sometimes helps in the computer programming aspects of game development. Computer games playing is also an important aspect of her social life, as she really likes cooperative multiplayer games played on the Internet

Now, let me summarize. Computer games provide an environment in which one solves problems, accomplishes tasks, perhaps works cooperatively with other game plays, and so on. Through introspection and perhaps with the help of appropriate instruction, the game play can learn a great deal about him or herself, about other people, and about solving problems and accomplishing tasks. By luck or design, this learning may well transfer into other domains, or may lead to a career based on various aspects of game playing.

Students Developing Games

The article Kafai (2001) focuses on the idea of students developing games. Kafai has explored the student learning process as young children (for example, 10 year olds) designed and implemented games using the Logo programming language. His main thesis is that this is a constructivist process and is a better learning environment than can be created by merely having students play a game developed by someone else. Quoting from the end of the article:

We have only begun to build a body of experience that will make us believe in the value of game activities for learning. Obviously, the image of children building their own games is as much a "knee-jerk reflex" for constructionists as making instructional games is for instructionists. In the case of instructional games, a great deal of thought is spent by educational designers on content matters, graphical representations, and instructional venues. The greatest learning benefit remains reserved for those engaged in the design process, the game designers, and not those at the receiving end, the game players.

Summary

Computer games tend to have three characteristics that make them of interest to educators:

1. For many people, computer games are attention grabbing and attention holding. Indeed, computer-based games are addictive or somewhat addictive for many people.
2. Computer games can be designed to provide types of interactivity and scoring that many users find to be highly motivating.
3. Computer games can be designed to facilitate interaction of a large number of people simultaneously playing a game, interacting as individuals and/or as members of a team. Many people enjoy this type of social interaction.

Computer "games" (simulations) can be designed specifically to be educational. A flight (airplane, space ship) simulator, for example, can be designed so that it is near enough to the "real thing" so that the learning occurring when playing the game (getting trained in the pilot simulator) transfers readily to the real world.

Indeed, such simulations are considered to be one form of computer-assisted learning, and they are a very successful component of CAL.

It has become common to integrate some game-like characteristics into CAL materials. The hope has been that the this will lead to improving the education of students. Often this is more hope and hype than actual research-supported learning data.

From an "educational value" point of view, a key issue is the transfer of learning. Quite a lot is known about transfer of learning. Over the past two decades, the "near transfer, far transfer" theory has given way to other more useful theories, such as the "high road, low-road" theory. People developing educational games need to pay careful attention to current theories of learning and transfer of learning. If you want to learn more about transfer of learning, take a look at page 22 in:

Moursund, D.G. (2005). Introduction to information and communication technology in education. Accessed 2/6/05: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/
~moursund/dave/ICT_Book.html

There are a number of games such as chess, checkers, backgammon, bridge, and Scrabble that have been quite popular when played in non-computer environments, but that computers can now play quite well. Such game-playing computer programs can be used as opponents as one builds and maintains skill in playing a game.

Chess provides a good example. The "skill level" of a computer chess program can easily be adjusted to be at a level to fit the needs of its human opponent. It has become common for chess players, ranging from novices to grand masters, to make use of computer programs as they build and maintain their chess knowledge and skills.

The early history of Artificial intelligence includes many efforts to develop compute programs that could play various games quiet well. You can learn more about this topic and other educational aspects of AI in education through my book:

Moursund, D.G. (2004). Brief Introduction to Educational Implications of Artificial Intelligence. Access (at no cost) at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/AIBook/.

To close this section, I want to share a brief news item I read about two years ago.

COMPUTER GAMES ARE GOOD FOR YOU

Playing computer games can be beneficial, say researchers studying the complex social interactions inherent in the popular online multiplayer shoot-em-up Counter-Strike. Professor Talmadge Wright and colleagues at Loyola University in Chicago say that Counter-Strike is much more than just racking up "kills," with the strategies and tactics used by many regular players approaching the complexity of those used in chess. And although much of the banter reflects the typical trashtalk of teenage boys, it's a mistake to dismiss the gamers as misguided misanthropes. "The most common emotion when people are playing is laughter," says Wright. In fact, games like Counter-Strike that rely on trust and cooperation give rise to strong communities and friendships, he adds. "It gives people an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not do in real life that allows them to play with their own feelings. It is an area that's bricked off from everyday life that you can enter and leave at will. It offers you a way to play with things you may be scared of in a safe way where there are very few consequences." For these reasons the games are good for players, says Wright, who suggests that many studies of game-playing have been skewed by hidden agendas. "There's a cultural motif that underlies the critiques that go on around this, the idea of mindless activity is given short shrift in culture where productivity is given the highest praise." (BBC News 12 Feb. 2003) (NewsScan Daily, 12 February 2003.)

(Becta) British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta). Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.becta.org.uk/search.cfm. Use the search term "games" to access a number of projects. The search produced 78 hits on their site on 2/5/05. Quoting from the Becta home page:

Becta is the Governments key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning strategy for the schools and the learning and skills sectors.

Conati, Crista and Klawe, Maria (2000). Socially Intelligent Agents to Improve the Effectiveness of Educational Games. Accessed 2/5/05: www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/lci/papers/ 2000/
conati-aaai-fall2000-camera.pdf. Quoting from this research article:

These results indicate that, although educational computer games can highly engage students in activities involving the targeted educational skills, such engagement, by itself, is often not enough to fulfill the learning and instructional needs of students. This could be due to several reasons.

One reason could be that even the most carefully designed game fails to make students reflect on the underlying domain knowledge and constructively react to the learning stimuli provided by the game. Insightful learning requires meta-cognitive skills that foster conscious reflection upon one's problem solving and performance [2, 4, 24], but reflective cognition is hard work. Possibly, the high level of engagement triggered by the game activities act as a distraction from reflective cognition, when the game is not integrated with external activities that help ground the game experience into the learning one.

(DiGRA) Digital Games Research Association. Accessed 2/5/05) http://www.digra.org/index.php. Quoting from the Website:

Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) is a non-profit, international association of academics and practitioners whose work focuses on digital games and associated activities.

Games-to-Teach Project. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.educationarcade.org/gtt/. Quoting from the (old) Website:

The Games-to-Teach Project is a partnership between MIT and Microsoft to develop conceptual prototypes for the next generation of interactive educational entertainment. In our first year, we developed conceptual frameworks of games for math, science, and engineering education. This year, we are developing prototypes of two of these titles for testing and developing five more conceptual frameworks of games in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Directed by MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies, Games-to-Teach is funded as a part of Microsoft's Campus and supported by the Learning Sciences and Technologies Lab at Microsoft Research.

You can learn moe about the expanded and current version of this project activity at: Accessed 2/6/05: http://www.educationarcade.org/

Game Studies. The international journal of computer game research. Accessed 2/6/05: http://www.gamestudies.org/ Quoting from the Website:

Game Studies is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games.

Our mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming. 

Kafai, Yasmin B. (2001). The Educational Potential of Electronic Games: From Games–To–Teach to Games–To–Learn. Accessed 2/6/05: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/
conf2001/papers/kafai.html Quoting from the document:

Most software designers and commercial companies have sought to capitalize on this energizing of behavior by making games for learning. Building on the motivating nature of games, they hope to make the learning of hard core academic matters more fun, if not easier. Far fewer people have sought to turn the tables: making games for learning instead of playing games for learning. As one should expect different educators think of using games in different ways, reflecting their different philosophies of education. The most relevant of these differences is the split between predominantly instructionist philosophies and predominantly constructionist ones (see Papert, 1993).

…

We have only begun to build a body of experience that will make us believe in the value of game activities for learning. Obviously, the image of children building their own games is as much a "knee-jerk reflex" for constructionists as making instructional games is for instructionists. In the case of instructional games, a great deal of thought is spent by educational designers on content matters, graphical representations, and instructional venues. The greatest learning benefit remains reserved for those engaged in the design process, the game designers, and not those at the receiving end, the game players.

Kirriemuir, John and McFarlane, Angela (2004). Literature Review in Games and Learning. NESTA Futurelab. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/research/reviews/08_01.htm. This extensive report—also available as a 21 page PDF that was very slow to load for me—provides a nice history and overview of the literature Here are some quotes from the Website:

Research on the motivations for games playing have been carried out by researchers across a number of disciplines. One of the earliest, and most cited, research works is by Thomas Malone (Malone 1981) who identified three main ways in which games were able to motivate players: fantasy, challenge and curiosity. Other research confirms these findings; …

…

A key concept that frequently emerges in the literature is that of ‘flow’, first discussed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). This is summarized by several researchers as “the state in which we are so involved in something that nothing else matters”, which has clear relevance to research into games and play. Debate on the issue of ‘flow’ centres around how the ‘state’ can be created in an individual, and measuring how it might make a person more receptive to receiving, comprehending and using educational-based content and skills (we will go on to discuss in more detail how ‘flow’ might apply to the design of learning games in Section 4).

…

Simulation games are used increasingly in schools, though their take-up so far has been patchy. The Sim City game, where people design complex cities against a metropolitan budget, is used possibly more than any other mainstream game across the educational system and has been evaluated within classroom settings (Sim City 2002). Various research projects have analyzed the use of this game in the classroom and consistently report favorably, showing that this (and similar) games enable group discussion and experimentation, and often facilitate a wider range of skills than immediately apparent from the game (in the case of Sim City, these include mathematical skills, urban planning, economics, engineering, environmental awareness and a host of others that can be mapped directly onto academic subjects).

Linderoth, Jonas, Annika Lantz-Andersson & Berner Lindström (2002). Electronic Exaggerations and Virtual Worries: mapping research of computer games relevant to the understanding of children’s game play. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Volume 3, Number 2, 2002. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?
j=ciec&vol=3&issue=2&year=2002&article=
6_Linderoth_CIEC_3_2 Quoting the abstract of this research paper:

ABSTRACT There can be no doubt that computer games are artefacts with an increasing importance for our culture. Game design is one of the prime movers for the development of information technology and is leading the way for other sectors. Computer games have brought us cultural activities that were technically impossible before. We now have the possibility to manipulate and interact with people from all over the world in a virtual game space constituted of realistic photographic images. These new activities have created some uneasiness among educators, researchers, designers and parents who have raised a variety of arguments about the effects of computer games on childhood. Many have strong beliefs that the use of computer games can contribute to different aspects of children's development. On the other hand, there is an even stronger anxiety that computer games have negative social and cognitive effects on children. Even though this means that there is a clear need for research on the
issue of computer games as a part of contemporary childhood, academic study in this area has been divided, with fragments of knowledge scattered over a wide field of different discourses and traditions. In this article, the authors seek to summarise and discuss some of the studies and theoretical arguments about children and computer games. In order to do this, they outline and sketch some of the different empirical findings and research traditions that they find relevant for the understanding of computer games as a part of childhood. The purpose of this is to contribute with an overview that can be utilised as a resource for educators, parents, designers and others who deal with matters concerning children and computer games

Simulation and Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theory, Practice and Research. Accessed 2/6/05: http://www.unice.fr/sg/. Quoting from the Website:

… is the world's foremost scientific review devoted to academic and applied issues in the increasingly popular methodology of simulation/gaming as used in education, training, consultation and research round the world.  Simulation/gaming is to be taken in its broadest meaning, to encompass such areas as simulation, computerized simulation, gaming, simulation/gaming, policy exercises, planning exercises, debriefing, analytic discussion, post-experience analysis, modeling, virtual reality, game theory, role-play, role-playing, play, active learning, experiential learning, learning from experience, toys, playthings, structured exercises, debriefing.  This quarterly journal examines the methodologies and explores their application to real-world problems and situations.

Squire, Kurt. Reframing the Cultural Space of Computer and Video Games. Accessed 2//5/05: http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/research-vision.html.

Kurt Squire is associated with the Games-to-Teach Project. This article provides an excellent overview and history of the field of educational uses of computer games. The bibliography is extensive. Quoting from the Website:

The most under-examined potential of games may be their impact as an educational medium. Playing games, I can relive historical eras (as in Pirates!), investigate complex systems like the Earth's chemical & life cycles (SimEarth), govern island nations (Tropico), manage complex industrial empires (Railroad Tycoon), or, indeed, run an entire civilization (Civilization series). Did I forget to mention travel in time to Ancient Greece (Caesar I,II, & III), Rome (Age of Empires I, and II), relive European colonization of the Americas (Colonization), or manage an ant colony, farm, hospital, skyscraper, themepark, zoo, airport, or fast food chain? As my opening anecdote suggests, the impact of games on millions of gamers who grew up playing best-selling games such as SimCity, Pirates!, or Civilization is starting to be felt. Perhaps there are important cultural questions beyond "Do games cause violence?" that academics could begin exploring. 

Terdiman, Daniel. Games Join Space Race. Wired News. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.wired.com/news/space/
0,2697,66475,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5 Quoting from the Website:

In recent months, Vision Videogames has been putting the finishing touches on SpaceStationSim, a game timed for publication when the next space shuttle launches, supposedly this spring. As its title suggests, the game lets players pretend they're astronauts on the International Space Station in a 3-D, simulated environment.

But pure fantasy this is not. In fact, Vision Videogames designed the game using technical specifications from NASA as part of a Space Act agreement. And now the company is under contract to play a crucial role in the development of the crew exploration vehicles, or CEVs, that could someday prowl around the moon or Mars.

The Educational Arcade. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.educationarcade.org/ Quoting from this Website:

The Education Arcade represents a consortium of international game designers, publishers, scholars, educators, and policy makers who are exploring the new frontiers of educational media that have been opened by computer and video games.

Our mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of games by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education.  In short, we want to lead change in the way the world learns through computer and video games.

Video games 'stimulate learning' (18 March, 2002). BBC News. Accessed 2/5/05: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
education/1879019.stm.

This news item reports on research that looked at the educational value of the following games:

• Age of Empires II
• Bob the Builder
• Championship Manager
• City Traders
• F1 Championship Racing
• Freddi Fish
• Lego Alpha Team
• Legoland
• Micro Racers
• Pajama Sam
• Putt-Putt Enters the Race
• RollerCoaster Tycoon
• Sim City 3000
• The Sims
• The Tweenies
• The Settlers
• Uno
• Worms United

Quoting from the news item:

The UK study concluded that simulation and adventure games - such as Sim City and RollerCoaster Tycoon, where players create societies or build theme parks, developed children's strategic thinking and planning skills.

Parents and teachers also thought their children's mathematics, reading and spelling improved.

The investigation into the habits of 700 children aged seven to 16 also found that, far from being a solitary activity, children preferred to play games in pairs or small groups.

…

The director of Teem, Professor Angela McFarlane, said there was much to learn from the games industry in terms of developing scenarios that really challenged and engaged children, rather than reproducing text books on the screen.

"Adventure, quest and simulation type games have a lot of benefit - they're quite complex and create a context in which children can develop important skills," said Professor McFarlane.

Xie, Fei (02/02/2005) Video game doctor: Linking video gaming to surgical abilities. The California Aggie. Accessed 2/5/05: http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=7296. Quoting from the article:

Rosser has been using video games to train doctors in laparoscopic surgery -- a minimally invasive surgery that uses miniature tools and fiberoptic cameras controlled by joysticks -- since 2001. Rosser has found that students who played video games for more than three hours in one week had 37 percent fewer errors during the procedure, and finished the operation 27 percent more quickly.

Laparoscopic surgery is performed on just about any part of the body, from an appendix to the colon and gall bladder.

"Video games were the determining factor -- more than years of experience, gender, dominant/non-dominant hand, all of that," Rosser notes about his research.