From Gaming to Learning, When, Where and How?

It was just two weeks ago that Purdue hosted the Serious Games Research Forum to highlight the use of video games as educational tools. One session was provocatively entitled, “Engaging Learners through Gaming.”

During that discussion, panelists and members of the audience discussed the concept of “serious” games, those designed to specifically teach something, versus the concept of commercial games. A key question arose, should there be a separation between the two?

The forum, held at the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, featured James Gee as the keynote speaker. The professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University and author of the book “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,” discussed learning principles that he believes are present in “good” commercial video games. He went on to discuss the concept of serious games, i.e. video games that featured an objective beyond entertainment.

A doctoral candidate that attended and helped organize the forum offered the following summation. “Serious games take gaming out of the living room and into the classroom, and bring fun, creativity and engaging interactive capabilities to create learning environments that are more relevant to today’s digital learners,” said Lorraine Kisselburgh, a research assistant who assisted in organizing the forum.

To me, this means the time has come to end the philosophical and theoretical discussions - it is time to take these concepts and test them out. It seems to me that it is past time to do an organized comparison study of two groups, one that uses specific video games as a teaching tool and a second group that uses a traditional learning mode.

In fact, I suggest that Purdue talk to Maine to do such a test with a Middle School population that is essentially stagnant when it comes to learning even though the students have been provided the latest technology. It is time to determine if it is the teaching methods that are at the heart of the issue for students.

Purdue should contact Maine to do a study in a few Middle Schools where every student has access to a laptop. They should pick a large school and then utilize three control groups. One, that tends to use traditional models with the laptop a marginal tool, a second group that uses the laptops in a conventional learning environment, and then a third that uses one of the many games deemed helpful to increase learning in a particular subject area.

Such controlled tests are done all the time in the health services area and such tests lead to medical enhancements. It stands to reason that it is time to try the video game concept in a controlled classroom environment to see whether or not that leads to the enhancement of student learning.