Changing the Game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom? Squire, K

The author explores the issues that arise when we bring computer games into the classroom, arguing that we need to fundamentally rethink the ethos of our educational institutes if the use of educational games is to truly flourish.
This paper has come out of a comparitive study where the game Civilization III was used in schools as a basis for exploring world history. Squire notes that "bringing a commercial-quality educational game into the classroom may create as many motivational problems as it solves." In his study he found that the educational value of the game was not at all obvious to many students and 25% withdrew from the study because they found the game "too hard, complicated, and uninteresting", though an equal percentage were very enthusiastic about the game and thought it an excellent way to learn. Squire warns against simplisitc views of players and games:

"Games are very particular kinds of experiences. Playing games does not appeal to everyone (even among those under 30), and certainly no one game (or more appropriately game experience) appeals to everyone."

He considers the unique role that failure has in gaming as a "critical precondition for learning". Failure spurred some students to further learning, though for others it was problematic:

"For other students, failure caused frustration. Whereas the stronger, more confident students saw failure as a learning opportunity, other students did not."

The study also highlighted issues with complexity and difficulty - although these qualities can make a game engaging, for many students the difficulty and complexity of Civilization III were overwhelming. Squire suggests that it is playing the game in a classroom environment that is problematic, though I think his argument for this conclusion is weak - I think he needs more than the facts that "Civilization III is marketed toward a broad audience and... has sold millions of copies" and "all the children in the study played games out of school" to back this claim.

Another factor which caused resistance in some students was the fact that the game playing in the school context was compulsory - diluting the game's engagement and attractiveness to the players.

Squire points out that games present players with complex holistic problems, unlike contemporary educational practice which breaks problems down into easy-to-learn chunks. In his conclusion he suggests that the gaming environment is more aligned to our current economic needs than the traditional educational models:

"Ironically, the skills required by the game curriculum—problem identification, hypothesis testing, interpretative analysis, and strategic thinking—more closely align with the new economy than does the "factory" model of curriculum that privileges following directions, mastering pre-defined objectives, performance on highly structured tasks, and intellectual obedience."

However it is into the context of this "factory" model that educatators are introducing computer games. This paper highlights the fact that this mismatch brings with it a raft of complex issues that resist easy solution.

Learning Conversations in World of Warcraft, B. A. Nardi, S. Ly, J. Harris.

This paper describes an investigation into how players learn in WoW through conversational activity. The study focused on the analysis of chat logs but was augmented by interviews and many hours of gameplay.

The authors started their approach was guided by Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) – the difference between what a learner can do on his/her own and do with the help of teachers or more experienced peers – at first glance a fairly uncontentious suggestion that we can do more with help from more experienced people. And the authors found what they were looking for - there is indeed evidence that players learn from one another through emotionally tempered conversational activity:

“Learning in conversation in World of Warcraft is erratic, spontaneous, contextual, and driven by small events. It is enlivened by playful, lightweight emotions. Such learning can support simple fact finding, the development of tactics and strategy, and the working out of a moral order.” (p9)

However I had some reservations about this paper and the authors provided insufficient information on their data-gathering or analysis to allay my concerns. For instance they do not make clear if they were participants in the conversations analysed or if their analysis was checked with the participants. In any case I felt that the categorical nature of their analysis was unjustified. The reasons why we make a particular remark at a given moment in a conversation are not always clear to us, even immediately after the event - so how much more uncertain might our interpretation of conversations be weeks or months after the conversation took place? Also I was at a loss to understand how the authors could describe the discovery of “emotionally inflected discourse in learning conversations” as “surprising”. Surely the absence of emotion in conversations taking place in the heat of an online battle that would be more remarkable.

I was also troubled by some of the assertions made in the discussion of their findings. For example:

"The presence of emotion in learning conversations is important because it suggests that despite the popularity of video games amongst youth, they are not a panacea for learning [see 12] because the emotion derives in part from the care players have for the game."

This just seems muddled thinking to me. It may well be true that 'video games are not a panacea for learning' but how this is suggested by the presence of emotion in learing conversations is beyond me. The referenced paper "Changing the Game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom?" argues that many complex factors come into play when games are used as tools for learning, and refrains from drawing easy conclusions. It's not immediately obvious to me that emotion derived in part from a player's 'care for the game' is necessarily a barrier to learning but equally it seems clear that some heightened emotions relating to the game (e.g. stress, anxiety, fear of failure) may indeed be problematic - a more considered treatment of the role of emotion in learing would have been helpful here.

However, despite my reservations, I think that the issues raised in this paper are interesting and merit further investigation.