Games in Traditional Education
This page is a sub-section of the Games in Education series; to visit the main page, please click here. All referenced games are listed in the Games Archive.
Games in the Classroom
There are multiple ways to implement game-based learning, and not all of them have to be utilized during class time. However, lets start with the most controversial. Games can be great supplements for a lesson plan as they can either reinforce material or set up a teaching environment. Squire notes that “games excel at creating teachable moments for teachers to explain investigative and model-building skills” (Squire 2011). As mentioned previously, games can place students in situations they are unable to experience in a school or even in real life. Games like Supercharged! allow concepts like electrostatics to come to life. In Supercharged! students control a spaceship that places charged particles which allows them to see how the laws of physics work and test them rather than just reading about them in a textbook (Squire 2011).
Games also create teaching opportunities for the students. Pairing students to one computer encourages students to help each other and collaborate during gameplay which may produce new perspectives and strategies. Some students may be more advanced than others, allowing those students to teach and thus reinforce the material they already to know to the less advanced student. Teachers can use games like Supercharged! to enrich a lesson plan with material that can be explored and analyzed instead of passively consumed.
Games can also be used to combine multiple disciplines. Mr. Plank, the Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Washington, collaborated with professors from many fields, including architecture, business, and resource management, to create the UVa Bay Game. This game allowed students to work from multiple perspectives, like farmers, policy-makers, and businessmen, to see how their actions as independent agents impacted a global system. Instead of limiting subjects to their respective field, students had a chance to see how one field was interconnected with another one, encouraging system thinking (Plank 2012).
Games also create teaching opportunities for the students. Pairing students to one computer encourages students to help each other and collaborate during gameplay which may produce new perspectives and strategies. Some students may be more advanced than others, allowing those students to teach and thus reinforce the material they already to know to the less advanced student. Teachers can use games like Supercharged! to enrich a lesson plan with material that can be explored and analyzed instead of passively consumed.
Games can also be used to combine multiple disciplines. Mr. Plank, the Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Washington, collaborated with professors from many fields, including architecture, business, and resource management, to create the UVa Bay Game. This game allowed students to work from multiple perspectives, like farmers, policy-makers, and businessmen, to see how their actions as independent agents impacted a global system. Instead of limiting subjects to their respective field, students had a chance to see how one field was interconnected with another one, encouraging system thinking (Plank 2012).
Games in Informal Learning
Squire and Patterson studied how science games could be used in informal settings, such as after-school programs and summer camps. They note that “informal science education is unique in that it is free to operate in widely diverse contexts. Whereas schools must respond to a variety of local and national political needs, pressures, and concerns, informal science educators have significant freedom in pursuing goals germane to institutional interests” (Squire and Patterson 2010). Informal settings tend to be more flexible with time and less burdened by testing. Eric Klopfer, who has implemented augmented reality games about virology and epidemiology in informal school settings, “has shown conceptual changes in how participants think about diseases and how they prioritize steps in conducting investigations” (Squire and Patterson 2010). Squire, who started a summer program based around Civilization, found that students were taking the game home to create modifications or performing research on their civilization in self-directed study (Squire and Patterson 2010).
Games as Assessments
Okay, I lied; this one is probably the most controversial. Games are also being considered as a prototype for the next generation of tests (Gee and Shaffer 2010). Games are not only able to test skills like problem-solving and scientific inquiry that standardized tests cannot capture, but are argued to be less expensive and more practical than performance assessments (Rothman 2011). Rather than testing what students already know, Rothman explains, game-based tests can show what the student can do with that knowledge. They “make it possible to measure complex abilities because they allow assessors to observe students’ activities in ways not possible with even the most sophisticated paper-and-pencil tests” (Rothman 2011).
Above: Gee on Grading with Games