Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

11.30.11 | Some teachers don’t just embrace video games in the classroom. They design them.

Such is the case with Brianno Coller, an engineering professor at Northen Illinois University in DeKalb. His third-year students “build virtual race cars, complete with roaring engines and screeching tires, that must maneuver an increasingly challenging course. Along the way, they’re exposed to computational math, a basic building block of engineering,” reports USA Today. (See the video above.)

“I use games to, in some sense, throw away the textbook,” says Coller, 42. “My philosophy is that learning can be a burdensome chore or it can be an interesting journey.”

His philosophy is being embraced in schools around the country. Writer Mary Beth Marklein offers these examples:

At Boston College, nursing students conduct forensics at a virtual crime scene. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a game called Melody Mixer teaches students how to read and compose music. Students at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., play World of Warcraft, a multiplayer online game, in a course on intelligence studies.

“The key driver is the need for ways to make learning more engaging,” says Larry Johnson, CEO of the non-profit New Media Consortium and co-author of a report this year that predicts an explosion of game-based learning in higher education within three years. “Games can open that door for many students.”

Go read the story for more examples of game-based learning and studies on the popularity of gaming among college students. It also includes comments from educators who are skeptical that games are more compelling motivators than other instructional programs.

While we’re on the subject, I wanted to point to Seth Schiesel’s ground-breaking game reviews in The New York Times. On one level, his reviews are significant just for being where they are: very often above the fold (accompanied by a large, colorful graphic) on the Arts page of the most respected news source in the country. Video games have never had such a privileged cultural position.

But Schiesel’s writing is what truly elevates the reviews. He’s not afraid to blend insightful cultural analysis with a fan’s geeky enthusiasm, and the results are must-reads, even if you would never pick up the games yourself.

One of the most compelling ways Schiesel puts games in their full cultural (and educational) context is his unabashed comparison of the games to literature and film. In the case of a recent review of “The Elder Scrolls V: The Skyrim,” he even goes so far as to say the game’s complexity surpasses those more hallowed genres:

Skyrim is modern fantasy role-playing of the highest order. It is akin to the “Game of Thrones” of video games: sweeping, almost daunting in scope, richly realized and fully able to absorb fans for months or even years. Like great fantasy literature, this game has a deep lore and back story (developed over the past 17 years since the series made its debut in 1994 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena) propelling current events. Things happen for a reason. But unlike a novel, a great role-playing game like Skyrim lets you shape those events and become a player on the world stage.

Schiesel’s reviews never fail to remind us that video games offer all the richness of texts that has long found their ways into classrooms and lecture halls. And he even suggests that their interactivity offers a new type of world-shaping literacy we are only beginning to conceive.

Of course, in his comparisons of games to literature and film, Schiesel never forgets the fun factor, the reason we return to these types of stories again and again. Consider how he starts another recent review:

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is the finest, most exciting action-adventure movie in years.

Oh wait, did I just say movie? Sorry. I meant, Uncharted 3 is the finest, most exciting action-adventure video game in years.

The confusion is a compliment. No game has so gloriously melded interactivity with the visual and narrative vernacular of Hollywood. Dangling from a cargo plane high over the Arabian desert, rushing from the collapsing ruins of a medieval French chateau, spelunking Syrian crypts, sprinting over Colombian rooftops, traversing a sinking cruise ship — in each of Uncharted 3’s most spectacular moments I almost felt my fingers leaving the controller in search of some popcorn.

What student wouldn’t want to go along on that ride?

Plus: Interested in practical information on how to get a game-based program started in school classrooms and libraries? Lucas Gillispie, an instructional technology coordinator at Pender County Schools in Burgaw, N.C., put together a smart collection of tips and observations at School Library Journal.