If you follow my work, you can probably guess that I spend little time promoting the educational value of digital games. But, I realize that games are an important learning option promoted by many in the ed tech community. Because I make a serious effort to influence other practicing and future educators, I try to be analytical when I find my own priorities in disagreement with what others propose.
I think I see games as adding unnecessary layers to the learning process. It is not that games are not productive, it is that this productivity comes at a cost. Games provide an experience to interpret, but my analysis suggests that it takes several layers of activity to generate this experience. Game play itself represents one layer. Playing a game requires engagement with the scenario of the game, following the rules of the game, generating the actions required by the game, etc. Expending the mental effort to engage in the scenario according to the rules of the environment provides experiences. The second layer involves an interpretation of these experiences. One must process this experience to identify facts, principles, rules, etc. Finally, one must integrate these nuggets with existing internal knowledge.
Contrast this series of activities with direct instruction. One interpretation of direct instruction might be that an author or a presenter attempts to identify facts, principles, rules for you and you then must engage in only the final stage of the learning process. There is some amount of interpretation of the external experience, but there is also some “preprocessing” by the individual serving as the source. There is no “game play” layer at all.
I am more a fan of simulations (or life) as a way to provide experiences. There is some effort involved in engaging a simulation or living, but I would describe this effort as authentic with some future transfer value. When we see value in providing learners experiences in processing primary sources as a component of learning, it makes more sense to me to engage with experiences that are as close as possible to the future experiences we expect learners to have to process.
I am also a fan of direct instruction. Why not skip the outer layers and provide learners in as succinct a fashion as is possible the facts, rules, principles we want them to understand and retain. Learning, when you get right down to it, is about the processing of an input by each learner. Each individual must do the work to modify his or her existing models of the world or find links between new experiences and what they already know. These are not easy tasks and overburdening learners with other simultaneous requirements may be damaging to the success of this final and most important stage.
Surprisingly, I have developed and evaluated learning games. My interest was in the development of reading skills. I still see this as a little different. The external “layer” of learner experience in such games is reading. Applying (or attempting to apply) the skill of interest served the goal of the game. There were no layers to get through to get to the priority process.
It also seems possible I am just not a game person. I do believe our own experiences play a role even in how we understand professional pursuits. I seldom play games that involve mental skill as a form of entertainment. If people want to socialize, I would rather talk rather than play cards and talk. I recognize that games provide a certain motivational component for some people. There than may be the trade-off to be considered – motivation vs. added cognitive demands.
Having said all this, I do recognize the serious approach some take to developing and evaluating games. I tend to promote learners be exposed to a variety of learning experiences with consideration given to the proportion of each activity. This has more to do with learning to learn rather than the acquisition of content knowledge/skills.
One of my colleagues, Richard van Eck, has been a noted supporter of serious games for some time. In a recent Educause Review column, he contemplates the past ten years of his experience with educational games. I certainly encourage any ed technologist to review his comments as they provide a solid overview of the topic.
