James Gee, video games and education

About what we can learn from games to create better learning systems as discussed by James Gee



This clip show James Gee exploring the problems student have with language and vocabulary, with the leap from high school to university. He asks if digital media can help with this problem. This reflects many of the problems my students face when they move from further education to higher, specifically when writing academic essays.

During research exploring how computer games and virtual environments can aid in education I have come across many articles from James Gee that have interested me. He has many interesting points of view on the subject of using video games to improve learning and motivation, some of which I will mention here.

His article GOOD VIDEO GAMES AND GOOD LEARNING sent me on some interesting journeys into the subject and gave me a starting point on which to ground my research. When roaming further I discovered his book Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy, which really pointed the way.

"I wanted to play the game so I could support Sam’s problem solving. Though Pajama Sam is not an “educational game”, it is replete with the types of problems psychologists study when they study thinking and learning. When I saw how well the game held Sam’s attention, I wondered what sort of beast a more mature video game
might be. I went to a store and arbitrarily picked a game, The New Adventures of the
Time Machine—perhaps, it was not so arbitrary, as I was undoubtedly reassured by the association with H. G. Wells and literature.

As I confronted the game I was amazed. It was hard, long, and complex. I failed
many times and had to engage in a virtual research project via the Internet to learn some of things I needed to know. All my Baby-Boomer ways of learning and thinking didn’t work. I felt myself using learning muscles that hadn’t had this much of a workout since my graduate school days in theoretical linguistics.

As I struggled, I thought: Lots of young people pay lots of money to engage in an
activity that is hard, long, and complex. As an educator, I realized that this was just the problem our schools face: How do you get someone to learn something long, hard, and complex and yet enjoy it. I became intrigued by the implications good video games might have for learning in and out of schools. And, too, I played many more great games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, Halo, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Rise of Nations, and Legendof Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Good video games incorporate good learning principles, principles supported by
current research in Cognitive Science (Gee 2003, 2004). Why? If no one could learn
these games, no one would buy them—and players will not accept easy, dumbed down, or short games. At a deeper level, however, challenge and learning are a large part of what makes good video games motivating and entertaining. Humans actually enjoy learning, though sometimes in school you wouldn’t know that." (Gee J, 2007)


I have always thought since playing games on my Commodore 64, that if someone could figure out how to use this media for making education more interesting, then more students would attend school, learn more and have fun doing so.

Like James Gee states, "good video games incoporate good learning principles" and this is what I want to take advantage of to improve the delivery of critical studies modules on my courses.



Anyone can pass a test by memorising facts and figures etc, but putting that knowledge to good use is another story. Gaming and the principles involved in succeeding in a game can surely be used to make the gaining of knowledge an easier task. Not only easier but allowing difficult concepts to be assimilated unconsciously whilst having fun.

It's the learning principles Gee mentions in his books that make using a virtual environment so appealing.

VIDEO GAMES, MIND, AND LEARNING

"You build your simulations to understand and make sense of things, but also to
help you prepare for action in the world. You can act in the simulation and test out what consequences follow, before you act in the real world. You can role-play another person in the model and try to see what motivates their actions or might follow from them before you respond in the real world. So I am arguing that the mind is a simulator, but one that builds simulations to purposely prepare for specific actions and to achieve specific goals." (Gee J 2003)

Second Life is full of simulations created for educational purposes but many of them are just experiments or flights of fancy that don't really get used to the full. This is something I want to try an avoid in the construction of my SL resource. I want it to be a place were students can learn in a fun and familiar environment. A place to relax and not have to worry about looking nervous or learning at your own speed. Learning at your own speed is the key I feel and this is what gaming allows. It is often hard to learn at ones own pace in the classroom or studio, but virtual environments can provide a space in which this can be accomplished.

"Players must carefully consider the design of the world and consider how it will or will not facilitate specific actions they want to take to accomplish their goals." (Gee J 2003)

I have explored countless islands within SL and many of the learning spaces mimic the real world colleges, I don't see the sense in this. Why do this, surely it is a waste of modelling time, why not take advantage of what is possible in the virtual and create more inspirational locations and buildings. These will not only hold the attention of the "Facebook junkies" but hopefully engage them enough to take interest in difficult, or what they might call, non relevant subjects.

Why Are Video Games Good For Learning?

"You build your simulations to understand and make sense of things, but also to
help you prepare for action in the world. You can act in the simulation and test out what consequences follow, before you act in the real world. You can role-play another person in the simulation and try to see what motivates their actions or might follow from them before you respond in the real world. So I am arguing that the mind is a simulator, but one that builds simulations to prepare purposely for specific actions and to achieve specific goals." (Gee J 2009)

Virtual environments like Second Life allow users to take part in activities and simulations that mimic real world scenarios but without the risk. This enables testing of practices to be done in safety, and in the case of educational purposes in an environment that allows different ways of seeing. You can build and explore whatever you like, and walk around objects to better understand them. Theories of design, composition, colour and art can be investigated in ways the real world doesn't allow. It is this I want to take advantage of, to make complex or often boring theories of design etc, more fun and easier to understand.

"Video games are good for learning because, among other reasons, they have the
following features:

1. They can create an embodied empathy for a complex system
2. They are action-and-goal-directed preparations for, and simulations of,
embodied experience”
3. They involve distributed intelligence via the creation of smart tools
4. They create opportunities for cross-functional affiliation
5. They allow meaning to be situated
6. They can be open-ended, allowing for goals and projects that meld the
personal and the social

The cutting edge is realizing the potential of games for learning by building good games into good learning systems in and out of classrooms and by building the good learning principles in good games into learning in and out of school whether or not a video game is present." (Gee J 2009)

So there is no point in me using SL as a tool to improve delivery of the critical study sessions, unless it is used hand in hand with good educational practice and technique. I have already tried putting this to the test in a few SL tasks set for my students. They were successful mainly because I prepared the session well, and thought hard about how I could use SL to best explain what I wanted the students to learn. It was not just the case of mimicking what I did in the real world to teach, but thinking about how I could make best use of the tools in SL, to explain a difficult concept. Using technology that by students are familiar with proved to be very popular, as they could see how the knowledge they were assimilating in the virtual, was relevant in the real, something that has proven very difficult to put across using traditional techniques.

Bibliography

Gee J, 2003, Video Games, Mind, and Learning, International Digital Media and Arts Journal, volume 2 number 1
Gee J 2003, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
Gee J 2007, Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies), New York, Lang, Peter Publishing, Incorporated
Leidlmair K, 2009, After Cognitivism: A Reassessment of Cognitive Science and Philosophy, New York, Springer