The theme of the week was gaming and education, and we talked a lot about the educational benefits of certain video and computer games. A few potential benefits that stood out to me were that they can provide students with a sense of identity and agency, as well as a safe place for students to take risks and challenge themselves. Toward the end of class, one of our instructors told us a story about some of his high school students and golfers who find school to be boring and tedious but love to play video games for hours on end. He asked us the following question: Can we incorporate the elements of gaming that students enjoy in a classroom setting? If so, how?
My immediate thought as a future math teacher was to build off of the "safe place to take risks and challenge themselves" aspect I mentioned above. Learning new math concepts is often challenging for students, but the cool part is that they typically build off of previous concepts. In most video games, there are multiple levels with a "boss" to defeat at the end of each one. After successfully completing one level, players move on to higher, more difficult levels where they will use the skills they mastered in the previous levels to succeed. What if a math teacher looked at each concept as a "level" and the quiz or test at the end of that section as the "boss" for that level? As students move along, they will continue to use what they learned in the lower levels to take on new risks and challenges in the new levels. If they fail a quiz, they can have the mind set that they have another chance to start from the last level they completed successfully, just like in a video game. The final exam could be considered the final "boss" at the end of a video game, where passing it means you have completed the entire game (or course). Perhaps there could even be a system of bonuses and aides along the way.
My second thought was about the school houses used at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, I will take any opportunity to incorporate Harry Potter into anything! The entire student body is sorted into four houses: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. In these houses, students earn and lose points throughout the school year for things like good/bad behavior, providing correct answers in class, winning Quidditch matches, or winning a life-sized game of Wizard's Chess. At the end of the school year, the house with the most points wins the coveted House Cup. Within a classroom, students could be sorted into "houses" or "teams" at the beginning of the semester and earn and lose points for things like helping other students, following/breaking rules, performance on assignments and exams, winning exam review games, etc. Extending a challenge to the students at the beginning of the semester and asking them to work with a team could give them extra incentive and excitement around class activities and build a lot of skills and character traits along the way. There could be some sort of prize at the end of the semester for the team with the most points (e.g., pizza lunch, bonus points on the final, etc.)
I'll be interested to hear everyone's thoughts on these ideas! Who knows, maybe I will try one (or both) of these when I have my own classroom!
A few different people in our blog have suggested that a video game milieu in the classroom could be adopted, and most of those suggestions incorporated some sort of reward system that was external to the game: points or awards given the top performers in the game.
ReplyDeleteIt seems noteworthy that video games don't use this system; all rewards are internal to the game, and result only in greater recognition and "bragging rights" amongst those who are invested in the game. It seems like much academic achievement also functions in this way. Academic achievement (except in the case of scholarships and grants) generally results only in acknowledgment within the academic community. One is accorded a certain level of respect in a way that de-emphasizes the competitive nature of academic achievement; as long as we are singling our performers, it is necessarily a zero-sum game. At best, we will acknowledge an honor roll, but the grading curve ensures that this, too, is a club with limited membership.
Point being: maybe the game itself should provide its own rewards. It seems like an important lesson in such a milieu would be precisely that the achievement is worthwhile because it results in greater competence, better performance, and respect from peers.
I'm very intrigued by your comments here. I wonder, do you have any specific ideas or suggestions for how to accomplish this? I'd be interested to hear them!
DeleteGreat stuff all around here. I think the key to getting at those "internal" rewards would be technology, although I'm not exactly sure how that would work. Again, the elephant in the room here is motivation. Would kids be motivated to work toward the next level because it's a game?
ReplyDeleteMichael, you raise an interesting point, but I'm a little confused about your argument about internal vs external. The "levels" or points systems being discussed would be within the classroom, so it is about showing to your peers (classmates) that you can achieve at high levels, very similar to achieving high placement on a high score board in any competitive game. So I think that games and this model of a classroom both incorporate external motivators.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do hesitate about the competitive nature of the whole idea of incorporating a video game model. Erin, I love that you brought in Harry Potter, but I do worry that a system like that would set up needless rivalries. Hopefully they wouldn't get as intense as Gryffindor vs Slytherin, but it does seem to be a counterproductive force to introduce into our students' lives. I think this is one of the fundamental issues with co-opting the principles of video games for the classroom. Inherent in video games is a desire to win - we don't want our classroom to be a place where winning is the only goal. Yet our kids really like winning! A tricky puzzle to be sure.
I definitely see where you're coming from regarding the risks of creating a competitive atmosphere within the classroom, but I don't necessarily think that it would be entirely counterproductive. A healthy level of competition could potentially have a lot of positive effects in the classroom (e.g., increasing motivation and effort). I think the key, as I keep saying about so many things we learn about, is finding a balance. The teacher would need to maintain a certain level of control over how competitive things are getting and whether the competition is creating too many issues or distractions.
DeleteYeah, my internal-external thing doesn't work that well. I meant that the rewards occur within the confines of the game; there are no cash rewards or newspaper columns for those who do well at video games, and in fact the "leader boards" are motivating for only a tiny proportion of gamers. The satisfaction of the game is derived from solving puzzles, and recognition only occurs within the community. Achievement in school can be rewarded in a number of ways, but all of them occur within the confines of school. Even very public recognition such as valedictorian is kept within the confines and context of school. Systems of rewards and merits seem antithetical to the spirit of either gaming or academic achievement: perhaps it is not dissimilar to the idea of monetary compensation for complex tasks. One should be concerned in an academic setting that rewards such as pizza parties are inappropriate because they signify an incorrect identification of the satisfaction derived from performance of the task; conversely, if such rewards are an incentive in education, I'd be concerned that the tasks are far too simple and have far too little educational value.
ReplyDeleteI suppose what I have in mind is a game that fosters an excitement around problem-solving, and encourages people to encourage others to figure it out. A well-crafted game for the classroom should not only reward creativity, but also reward collaborative creativity. It should emphasize the possibility that the game isn't over until everyone has won.