Euan’s Blog

I was asked by the Scottish Further Education Unit to write an article for their magazine Broadcast about games and assessment in colleges.  Unfortunately as I wrote,  it turned into an article about what the education establishment could do to get good educational games…..

You can download the article here

 or read it here (without the cool images)

I am never quite sure how much of the research on ‘serious games’ is read outside the small coterie of academics and companies that play in the field but I need a starting point, so my comments are based on the assumption that there is a growing body of empirical evidence to prove that games-based learning is immensely effective when applied in a variety of educational scenarios.

If games are good learning tools are they also useful as assessment tools?

There are many forms of video games; strategic, role playing, quiz/ puzzle, first person shooter, sports, action and simulation. They all have one thing in common: they are based on a cycle of learning, and in most types of game there is an element of on-going summative and/or formative assessment required to progress to the next level.

Whether it be the simple wrong/right answer in a quiz or the questioning and reasoned decision making in a strategic team role playing environment, by playing video games the players are motivated to subject themselves to a continual self-assessment, peer assessment or ‘teacher’ assessment, where the ‘teacher’ is the ‘game’ itself.

There is not a huge amount of research on why gamers do this, but cognitive theory explains some of the psychological motivations as to why we play. What makes a great game is not necessarily a good story, or great graphics, although these are always nice to have; the fundamental of a good game is ‘game play’, the magic ingredient that means you can’t put it down.

Video games developers use intrinsic motivational techniques to addict gamers and keep them immersed in the experience. Game designers plug into the fact that most humans are self-motivated learners and explicitly deploy cognitive disequilibrium as a motivational device.

As designers we introduce players to an environment with which they are familiar and then add in an unknown, an unfamiliar or unexpected element to the scenario, ie. we create a state of disequilibrium. The player needs to adjust to the new element, initially by applying current knowledge and when this proves ineffectual by widening the extent of their enquiry and applying reason to solve the problem. (The technique is based on Piaget’s cognitive theory of child development and used, I suspect, inadvertently by most developers.)

Great game play is ensuring the problem solving is tough enough to engage the player, but not too hard to de-motivate, the reward for resolution exciting and the desire to continue enhanced. So the designer is seeking to put the player in a state of repeated cognitive disequilibrium and the player is in a perpetual quest to re-establish their equilibrium.

This reasoning can be applied pretty much across the board from complex 3D immersive multi-player online games to space invaders, flight simulators or Gran Turisimo. For example in space invaders when a new alien craft first appears, the player is unaware of what its power, effect or value is until it is engaged and destroyed. Armed with this new knowledge equilibrium is restored. It is a simplistic example but one that can be extrapolated into the sophistication and complexity of strategic multiplayer games like Eve Online, where continual, multilayered decision making, on trading, stock, armaments, strategic alliances are necessary to retain equilibrium in a constantly evolving environment.

So if we can accept that the fundamental game play of video games is based on learning and assessment how can they be used, and should they be used in mainstream education?

Grand Theft Auto IV launched at the end of April and was estimated to take over $400 million dollars in its first week, out performing even the biggest

So to me, the question ‘should we use them?’ is a no brainer. The how is the challenge. Already, Learning and Teaching

There is one key ingredient needed to get these superb technologies into the classrooms of our high schools and colleges but for far too long the discussion has been hijacked by the harbingers of doom and pedagogic and technical naysayers. Extended conferences, discussions and meetings are held to explore the dangers of video games, the technical challenges of how to integrate ‘proper’ assessment into gaming engines, the correct application of pedagogical and higher learning objectives, the methodology of extrapolating performance data from games, the conformance to shared learning objects and other educational digital ‘standards’. Most of it goes nowhere, and so much of it is utter guff.

Most teachers have never considered using nor want games in their classrooms. Many fear the unfamiliar and ignorance of what games are and could do is widespread.

The key to getting gaming into mainstream education is simply demand. The gaming industry is full of the most creative, inventive, technically gifted and talented individuals who could build the most incredible, compelling learning games, but if you don’t want their product they aren’t going to build it for you. Until educators show interest in their wares, games designers will happily peddle their genius to those who do appreciate them.

So lecturers, teachers, principals and support staff need to start playing computer games, just like they watch TV or go to the cinema or use a mobile phone. They need to start experiencing the only one of these four technologies which is intrinsically based on learning and assessment to achieve an outcome. Once educators start playing video games they might start to find uses for them in their classrooms, and once the games industry recognises that there is demand they will build to meet it.