Gaming for Grades

I believe almost any game can be adapted or used in the classroom for some purpose regardless of student age, from child to adult. Sometimes it requires thinking outside of the box or analyzing each part of the game to find how it can be relevant to modern day education, though. Any game where multiple people are on the same ‘side’ encourages and teaches teamwork skills. Games, where students play against each other, shows them how to overcome challenges and be a good sport. Even games played solo can teach patience and focus at least. I believe the trick is to find games the students are interested in as these have the best potential to be used and helpful. I even have a friend who told me that during law school she had a professor that used poker to teach them how to keep a straight face, or poker face while debating and presenting cases. I believe there is not a single game that can be used in all situations and that careful consideration needs to be made when picking the game for the intended audience and learning environment. However, here are two examples of mainstream games being used for educational purposes.

Assassin's Creed, a lesson in history

It is said that history is written by the victors and this plays into education as well. In countries where the government or ruling body is more authoritarian can have history books that teach very jaded views of what actually happened. The Assassin’s Creed game series covers many time periods including the Crusades in the middle east, Renaissance in Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the American Revolution, and even the age of piracy in the Caribbean.  The first game takes place in the Middle East during the Crusades and is played from the perspective of the Nizâris, or assassins of a minor Shi’i sect that was an important political factor at the time. The problem is that the majority of the educational texts written about this period of history were written by Sunni opponents or European travelers who did not understand the history or significance of the region. The game tells the story from a Shi’i assassin point of view, including teaching the reasons and motivations for the actions that were taken and their effect on history. It is important to note that the game is ‘historically guided’ but is not entirely accurate also, it is a game after all. However, an article from the American Historical Association points out that for undergraduates, the accuracy is less important than the excitement and curiosity to learn that the game invokes in history students. The article (Trépanier, 2014) states,

Yes, “historical” video games are filled with inaccuracies. Yet more than a limitation, these inaccuracies can serve as a pretext for discussion. For example, what factors, beyond sheer ignorance, caused these inaccuracies in the first place? How do various cultural influences, such as the conventions of cinema, shape the way in which they present history? How do they relate to ethical and commercial considerations?

In the game, the time period is represented accurately from the character designs, real world events, to the accents and wording that is used. The game teaches how life ‘felt’ during those periods. This feeling the game conveys to students of history, helps them understand regional bias and prejudices that these Shi’i, whose story the game tells, encountered and how they dealt with it by the ways of the time period. Is the game biased or slanted towards a particular point of view? Yes. And that is ok, even in education. As Squire (2011, p. 24) points out, “… remember that all representations of history are imperfect. Simplification is at the heart of historical interpretation; books include some facts and leave out others, while films tell stories from particular perspectives. Games happen to frame history according to certain variables (and not others).”

This popular meme represents the modern day gaming-student and is not fictional in some cases.

World of Warcraft, economics 101

I love the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games. My favorite going on 12 years is World of Warcraft. This is a fantasy setting game where ‘good and bad’ (in the game each side feels they are the good guy with the other being the bad guy) fight for power, resources, and recognition. While the game as a whole can be used to teach teamwork and organization skills, there is one part of it that is used more than any other for education, its economy. In World of Warcraft, the players drive the economy through the buying and selling of resources through an auction house. The prices of these resources vary depending on their usefulness, availability, and demand, just like a real economy. Students can learn how supply and demand work in a free-trade setting and the influence that has on related goods and services in an environment without real-world consequences.

I have been lucky enough to see World of Warcraft being used this way for a classroom and it opened my eyes to the potential of gaming in the education of all levels. I have gotten the impression over my six years of online education that educators do not always see the big picture or even the little picture when it comes to games in education. Educational games do not need 100% factual information in all areas if only a portion of the game applies to the lesson being taught. For example, in World of Warcraft, there are big events called raids where 10-25 people all gather to fight big monsters. This part of the game has little (although some) impact on the economy lessons and does not need to be a deciding factor in its use. Just like their being elves, orcs, and Pandaren (big panda bear people, yes I am serious) has no bearing on the educational value of the game for the economy lesson. That said, the different races and the side they fight for can be a lesson in prejudice and preconceived notions about good and bad, right and wrong that has real world value.

Educators need to think outside of the box and use the resources their learners will understand. These two games would not work for every class or every student but they can in the right class setting. Not every student is a gamer or understands the value games can possess for learning but with the world becoming more digitally inclined more people to understand the concepts of gaming than don’t. As educators, we need to take advantage of this and use it for our own purposes. Every source of learning is biased in some form and to think games should be excluded from learning because of bias or being called entertainment is… biased.

References

Squire, K. (2011). Video games and learning: Teaching and participatory culture in the digital age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Trépanier, N. (2014, May). The Assassin’s Perspective: Teaching History with Video Games. Retrieved from https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2014/the-assassin%E2%80%99s-perspective.