Seven Questions to Ask Before Using a Video Game In the Classroom

Today is the first day of school for most public districts in Texas. With that in mind, I’d like to offer seven important questions teachers should ask before using any videogame in the classroom. This list is based in part on a paper I delivered to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), 2005 Convention.

1. Is the game’s cognitive load appropriate for your students? Many simple edutainment titles are aimed at younger audiences. Consequently, these titles are often inappropriate for older students, who will find them less of a challenge and potentially insulting to their intelligence. Conversely, modifications of such titles as those in the Neverwinter Nights series, or the Civilization series, might be beyond the abilities of younger audiences.
2. Is the game easily modifiable? Many educational games on the market offer no capabilities for modification, giving teachers a “what you see is what you get” approach. Some games might have a higher level of adaptability for classroom use. For instance, a foreign language teacher can run a copy of The Sims 2 on her classroom computer and simply change the operating language, offering an instant immersive language environment for her students. Ideally, however, a game can be easily modified by the teacher, so that he can insert whatever objectives are needed into the gaming environment. Such modifications are more difficult and time consuming but doable, as seen in several examples for the Neverwinter Nights engine and Second Life.
3. Does the game align with your standards (local, state, national)? Fortunately this question is increasingly being addressed by educational video game companies, as they realize that the purchasing of their titles in large quantities by schools largely hinges on this question. Look at the excellent job Tabula Digita is doing making sure their math games are aligned with state and national standards. Hopefully the company selling the product has already done the alignment for you, however your job as a teacher will be to make sure you know where the product lines up with the standards you are responsible for teaching. If nobody has done that previously, chance are good you will have to do it yourself if you need to justify using the game in your classroom to parents and administrators.
4. Can the game present useful outcomes within a short time period? Class periods are generally short. Time spent on any lesson is perforce brief. Many excellent video games with learning potential are hugely complex and take hours to complete. However, you have just minutes in your class to drive home a point or two. Therefore you will need to eschew games that take an inordinate amount of time to develop their pedagogical points. Also, setting up a game and getting students going takes additional time, whether in a lab, on laptops, or on classroom computers. Setup and shutdown times will decrease the available minutes students can spend on the game and its learning objectives.
5. Does the game train or teach? This is a critical difference classroom teachers need to fully understand. Most “serious games,” as they are commonly called, train players in something. This training may involve safety practices, industrial techniques, machinery operation, or a host of other skills. Academic games aligned to state standards will focus on testable outcomes and high stakes exams. Most teachers will not want to deviate from the standards they are required to teach, or at least have a ready explanation as to how the game is germane to their subject matter. For instance, a geometry teacher could certainly justify using a game that involves creating floor plans; a history teacher can find plenty of justification for the many Civilization mods out there; and a language arts teacher can justify the typing and reading involved in most any higher level game. Regardless, if a game actively seeks to teach academic content, its appropriateness for the classroom will naturally rise above a rival game designed more for work skill enhancement.
6. Does the game track player progress? Videogames that keep track of the progress your students make will lift that burden off your shoulders. Ideally the game will offer reporting functions on each student so you can easily track their progress, and perhaps suggest remedial actions or advanced activities if a student is behind or ahead of the norm.
7. Are the graphics and gaming quality on par with contemporary entertainment titles? It is certainly possible to buy educational games which fall far below the expectations of students used to higher quality offerings. Since studies show that nearly two-thirds of all households play videogames, it behooves us to use quality games in the classroom since our students will likely be used to high standards. It’s always good to pilot test any particular title with students you trust. If they like the game, it’s probably worth the investment to outfit a school computer lab or buy a site license. Dr. Brian Woodfield over at BYU noted how a teacher set up Virtual ChemLab on one machine in the back of her classroom, which eventually led to the school purchasing a site license. I do mini-studies with my own kids from time to time. Also, my paper on assessing higher order thinking in videogames might help pinpoint the pedagogical potential of games with which you are unfamiliar.

In conclusion, any classroom intervention is worth serious consideration beforehand. Hopefully, these seven questions will help steer you toward quality products. Educational videogames are strong tools for teaching in the classroom. Judicious selection of appropriate titles may result in many positive results.

References:
Rice, J. (2005). Evaluating the suitability of video games for k-12 instruction. Paper presented to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), 2005 International Convention, Orlando, FL.

Games In Education: An Interview with Eva Zadeh

Earlier in the semester, I was contacted by grad student and freelance writer Eva Zadeh and interviewed by e-mail for a paper on which she is working. I thought Zadeh’s questions were good ones on the topic of educational videogames, and she agreed to let me put my answers in this blog. Here, then, is the interview. (I’ve since brushed up my responses, but the content is substantially the same.)

Q: Why is it important to put video games in classrooms?
A: The question is still out as to whether or not video games are important for classroom use. Certain media hold advantages over other media, depending on the situation. For instance, books are good for preserving dense information. Lectures are good for transmitting brief information quickly. Videogames are good for simulated experiences that can be pedagogical in some way.

The best place for videogames may well be in after school or extracurricular programs where time is not as limited and there is less concern about traditional testing. This is backed up in Squire’s dissertation, and elsewhere.

Q: For how long have you been working on educational video games? Is it something new?
A: I’ve centered my doctoral work around educational videogames. In that regard, I’ve been in the field personally only a few years. I think Marc Prensky helped popularize the idea of instructional videogames with his book in 2001. I think James Paul Gee helped popularize the idea in the educational research establishment with his book in 2003.

Some might say that instruction through videogames has been occurring since videogames first appeared. They were introduced (although via tube technology and not true vector graphics that some folks define as video) at the Brookhaven Nuclear Laboratory in the 1950s.

Personally, I think the notion of instruction through gaming received its biggest boost when Microsoft introduced Windows Solitaire. This game “trained” computer users on a mouse. Up to that time, PC users mostly navigated without a mouse. Windows required a mouse for some activities. Folks who had never used a mouse before became quite proficient after a few rounds with Windows Solitaire.

Q: I read in one of your papers that it was “widely believed that much more learning can take place within active environments.” How widely? Numbers? Since when?
A: This is a key question for which we are awaiting more empirical data. As frustrating as that might be, one of the even more fundamental questions yet to be resolved is, What should we measure? If we are going to measure test scores, I suspect that videogames won’t show any more improvement than any other program or product. My personal theory on improved test scores is, it doesn’t matter what product is used. What matters are the teachers, and what they do to get students to learn. The product matters little, in my opinion, other than to help promote an initial burst of enthusiasm.

Now, the idea that active environments promote learning more than static ones falls back on constructivism, and that opens up another can of worms altogether. Constructivists will always come down on the side of active environments, with or without empirical data to back them up. There may well be some research on what students learn through active environments as opposed to static ones. I recall a survey of students who went through an interactive museum exhibit versus those going through static exhibits. If memory serves, the interactive group enjoyed their experiences more, although they came away with knowledge of fewer facts.

I believe the quote in question was a synthesis of arguments by Squire and Jenkins, from the Insight journal, around 2003. Since then, much more attention has been paid to the field, with multiple journal articles and research in both education and the medical field. One of the better summaries of papers detailing benefits of educational videogames down through the years can be found in Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen’s article, “Third Generation Educational Uses of Computer Games,” in the latest issue of Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. See Table 1 for his list.

Q: Video games are said to be more engaging. Where does that theory come from? Situated learning? Or something else? Role of the teachers and books?
A: I would argue videogame interaction is self evidently more interactive than sitting through a lecture. I have proposed a means of estimating the higher thinking potential of any game, in a paper published in January this year in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. This involves a melding of Bloom’s Taxonomy to videogame interaction. The article is entitled, “Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games.”

As for the roles of teachers and books, some of the largest ongoing experiments have used both extensively with videogame environments. Indiana’s Quest Atlantis makes heavy use of hybrid learning, and the virtual world itself is quite text intense. In fact, I have discussed this with one of the lead developers, Dr. Scott Warren, now at UNT. My premise: Quest Atlantis is really a highly digitized, interactive text environment. If memory serves, Dr. Warren agreed, although he noted that much more than reading is involved with Quest Atlantis.

Nonetheless, text plays a key role in many of these games, which require reading and typing in order to engage in the environment. Books and teachers will never relinquish their key roles in the classroom. Videogames will increasingly offer supplemental educational vehicles, giving teachers additional resources to use in and out of the classroom.

Q: How do you measure the efficiency of video games in classrooms?
A: Again, efficiency of what? Efficiency of increasing knowledge? Higher test scores? Do videogames fall under the same media umbrella that other media do in Clark’s “delivery truck” argument, where he asserted media is immaterial in delivering the content? Or, do the interactions within games result in higher engagement and additional intrinsic motivation to discover new knowledge inside and outside the game, and school?

Q: Have scientists worked on the impact of learning through video games on the kids’ brains?
A: The major work in the hard sciences have centered around visual plasticity (Green & Bavelier) and glucose levels (Haier). Prensky is best known for postulating the digital natives / digital immigrants divide, but showed little in the way of experiments to back up the claim. Rosser showed that hand-eye coordination from videogame play has real world applications in modern surgery. Farrace-Di Zinno demonstrated that boys diagnosed with ADHD were more still and focused while engaged in videogames.

So, something is going on in the brain. Measuring the impact is somewhat difficult. Haier’s work with PET scans dates back to 1992, so at some point somebody will probably build on that work and give us a more detailed look at what is going on inside the brain during game play.

Here are the citations to the works above:
Farrace-Di Zinno, A.M., Douglas, G., Houghton, S. Lawrence, V., West, J. & Whiting, K. (2001, November). Body movements of boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during computer video game play. British Journal of Educational Technology 32(5). 607-618.

Green, C.S., Bavelier. D. (2007). Action-video-game experience alters the spatial resolution of vision. Psychological Science 18(1), 88-94.

Haier, R. J. (2003). Positron emission tomography studies of intelligence: From psychometrics to neurobiology. In Nyborg, H. [Ed.]. The scientific study of general intelligence — Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen. 41-52. New York: Pergamon.

Prensky, M. (2001a, September/October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prensky, M. (2001b, November/December). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 2: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-6.

Rosser, J.C., Lynch, P.J, Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D.A., Klonsky, J., Merrell, R. (2007, February). The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st Century. Archives of Surgery, 142(2). 181-186.

Q: What perspectives do you see for the future? Do you see any evolution in the field?
A: A defining groundwork, where everybody agrees to the same set of definitions, will help. I think we’ll see much more empirical data come out of the medical literature, with applications for education. Finally, we need a really killer app for education that meets the needs I spelled out at AECT 2005: a product with an appropriate cognitive load for students, aligned to standards, with problem solving germane to the subject; probably built on a rich 3D environment, and easily customizable by the teacher. I think we see a lot of this already in teachers tweaking the Neverwinter Nights engine for their own classroom use, but it takes an inordinate amount of time programming that game. If something out there could be offered that was easier for teachers to use in the classroom, I think considerable interest among educators and researchers would follow.

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Zadeh’s questions were good ones, and I enjoyed having to think about the topics she brought up, and justify some of my positions in the field. All told, it was a very thoughtful exercise, and I appreciated the opportunity to respond.