Video games and learning

I am late with my blog this week because of the video game Bejeweled.   I’d just kicked the habit on my iphone when I found it on facebook.    I felt this powerful compulsion to beat my previous score and then to beat the scores of other people.    The fact is, I have a problem.   I get addicted to video games and I lose hours in a void that involves trying to beat the highest score or get to the end of the game.   This week’s topic has unleashed my compulsive behavior again.   I buy games for my kids and then I end up finishing them first.  Games like Ratchet and Clank, Jax & Daxter, Rayman, Croc, Pharoah, Sim City and The Sims, have all at various times had a powerful hold over my attention.    In fact I have deliberately avoided buying more games because I know how bad I am.

So what is it that makes them so addictive?

According to James Gee’s , ‘Why Video Games are Good for your Soul‘, I am addicted to the buzz I get from the pleasure of learning.   Perhaps he is right, I love the feeling I get when I solve a puzzle, I love mastering the moves needed to progress a level, to make my simulation thrive, or to beat the monsters into submission. Most of all, I love finding out the resolution of a game’s narrative, especially after spending several weeks trying to get there!

This is a kind of learning that you don’t realize is taking place, one that presents you with incremental challenges, progressively rewards you for achievements and provides regular and specific feedback on your mastery (the death of a character is very memorable feedback!).   When we look more closely at this learning, we can see that it supports the development of literacy, through semantic understanding gained through situated cognition.    (I just had to throw those terms in!)   In other words, video games provide their players with a learning experience, in which they have agency in constructing an understanding of the game through repeated practice.   In many games this takes the form of sophisticated problem solving, a kind of learning that if not presented well, can have the capacity to switch students off in the school environment.

There is a lot that educators can learn from video games.  The narrative structure of the games, incremental increases in difficulty, demand for active participation, and development of the players’ problem solving approaches all contributes to their wide appeal and capacity to engage and motivate players.   While I don’t necessarily advocate video games as a pedagogical tool, I think that teachers can be more strategic about designing learning experiences that utilize some of the features found in these games.

Active problem solving, self paced learning with the opportunity to practise, receive feedback and have agency in constructing understanding and mastery of the learning, seem to be key principles in the success of video games.   Perhaps, transferred into the classroom the same principles can help educators to design learning experiences in which motivate, challenge and engage their students.   Perhaps, we could even make them ‘addicted’ to learning!