Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

9.18.09 | Q: I know you always say you’re not advocating the use of games for learning in particular, but rather that games offer a model for effective learning. Why are games such an important model for us to be looking at? Why are they a good model for understanding learning?

A:  First of all, it’s a good model because games are about problem solving, and they’re not about just learning facts. You learn the facts as tools to solve the problems. And we know if you teach people just facts, you have no guarantee they can solve problems, but if you teach them to solve problems, we do know they have to learn the facts to solve the problem. That’s all games are: sets of problems in an interesting environment.

The second thing is games give situated meaning. That is, they tie words to images, actions, dialog, experience, not just other words. We know from research on the brain that humans learn better when words are associated with images and actions and experiences and not just definitions or other words.

[Henry Jenkins has also noted that games create a space where people can experiment. “We talk about the magic circle in game theory,” Jenkins told Spotlight reporter Heather Chaplin in a forthcoming article. “That’s the idea that there’s a kind of magic circle that allows you to experiment with things that might feel high-risk in another context.”]

The third thing is they’re guided experiences. Again, we know from research that humans learn from experience. Human beings are made to get experiences and to use those experiences in the future when they have to learn new things or face new problems. They think about what experience they’ve had and they base their hypothesis on what to do on those experiences.

Games are not just giving you experiences; they’re guided experiences. They have clear goals, there is mentorship and help, and the experience is well designed to facilitate learning. For example, games give lots of feedback. It’s not just throwing people into any old experience. Games are designed and guided experience. It is experiential learning. But a lot of experiential learning in education will just throw people into it, let them do whatever they want, and stay out of their way. That is not mentorship. There are no guidance, goals or feedback.

Games are also good in preparing you for learning in other ways later. They’re not good in covering an entire curriculum. They’re better to help students prepare, and get them ready for learning in a variety of other ways. In algebra, a game can be great for setting the foundations for learning algebra, to give students motivation, to prepare them for that future learning, but they’re not going to learn algebra just from the game. We want people to learn with all sorts of different tools, not just games. Games are good because they’re so motivating. They’re so good at situating you in a real experience set in a virtual world.

So those are the features that games have and that any good learning ought to have. Clearly, lots of learning has those features and is not delivered by a game, but games are one way to deliver that.

Q: I think people misunderstand this about your work; do you want to say anything else about the dangers of being too gung-ho about games?

A: I think there is a danger in being gung-ho about any technology for two reasons. One, we want to use them all. And two, the technology is not the main thing. It’s always in the service of a learning community or system.

So what we should be designing is communities of learners, or learning systems, where people socially interact and collaborate to learn. Then we should put the best tools we have to build that community. The impetus is not on the tool, it’s on the community. It’s on the learning system you build, the system of interaction and mentorship and guidance.

I’m against any kind of technological determinism, including books by the way. We know, for example, that if little children have no opportunity to talk about books and to interact over books, just reading them doesn’t do them a lot of cognitive good. They need to stop and talk and socially interact over books. That’s true of any technology. We basically want to look at the social systems of learning we create, and have as many good tools to facilitate and resource that learning community. Games are only one of those.