Video Games as Collaboration Tools Report.
Video games have the potential to be deeply engaging for
learners. For decades, psychologists have studied video games as models of
intrinsically motivated learning. The techniques that games use—fantasy,
control, challenge, curiosity, collaboration and competition—are now the
cornerstones of motivational theory. Games have grown in complexity, and our
understandings of them have grown as well. Consider for a moment how games have
moved away from requiring players to read instructions. By analyzing what
players do, and by providing real-time feedback to the player, game designers
can successfully teach players how to play without supplemental materials.
Educators often have similar goals: We want to deliver feedback just in time,
while students are engaged in meaningful activity. This capacity for immediate
feedback and instruction is a primary reason to use games for learning,
because, in a modern school setting, real-time feedback is difficult to come
by.
Games can record learners’ actions, which opens new
opportunities for data-driven decision-making. Students, teachers, parents, and
administrators can view individual or aggregated data across play sessions.
With the assistance of data-based metrics collected from games, educators might
know when a learner is on- or off-task, or know when a learner is struggling with
a concept. For example, in “ProgenitorX,” players face an outbreak of zombies
due to a virus that escaped a science lab. Players use stem cells to grow
tissues and organs and heal the victims of the zombie plague. Liz Owen and Rich
Halverson studied player data and found that successfully completing the game’s
advanced levels is a strong predictor of player performance on traditional
post-tests—meaning the player has learned some stem cell science.
Soon, data visualizations will be available to students
and teachers. We imagine them supporting students reflecting on their own
learning, as well as deep conversations among teachers, students, and perhaps
parents and the public about learning. Our goal is not to replace teachers, but
to empower teachers through tools that make their jobs easier and more fun. We
imagine games helping teachers not only by making learning fun and interesting
for students, but also by giving them better tools for diagnosing and assessing
learning.
