The potential of video games as a pedagogical tool

When I was seven years old, my parents bought me and my brother a Nintendo Entertainment System, which they would eventually refer to as “The Idiot Box. ” There was an implicit assumption (one that persists in much of the general public today) that video games were simply a toy and nothing of real substance could be gained from them. Considering this, and the prevalence of video games in society (59% of Americans play video games; Entertainment Software Association, 2014), numerous questions have been raised about the long term effects of regular use. While the media focus is generally on potential negative effects (see Ferguson and Kilburn, 2009, 2010; Anderson et al., 2010; Bushman et al., 2010; Rowell, 2010 for debate on violent video games causing aggression in gamers), there is also evidence to suggest that there may be a range of potential positive effects of video games. It should be noted that when “video games” are referenced in this article it is specifically with regard to commercial, “for fun” games and not games that were designed with educational purposes or cognitive training in mind. This article argues that video games can be a useful pedagogical tool for educators at all levels of academia. Let's consider a simple anecdotal example of how video games may encourage children to learn large amounts of information. Pokemon is a popular children's game in which the player has to fight and collect various creatures, called “Pokemon. ” In the original Pokemon game, there were 150 Pokemon that could be found. Each Pokemon has a name, a “type” (like water type or fire type), a weakness and a strength (fire types are weak against water types, but strong against grass types), and a stage of its evolution (some Pokemon can turn into a new one if you used it enough). Roughly speaking, this gives us 5 distinct pieces of information per Pokemon and multiplying this by 150 gives 750 distinct units of information contained by the list of all the Pokemon in the first Pokemon game. Now let's consider another list of information that is considered more educationally important: the periodic table of the elements. Within the periodic table each element is defined by a symbol, a name, an atomic number and weight, a phase at room temperature, and its metal or gas type. That comes to 6 distinct units of information per cell. Multiplying this by 118, the total number of elements, returns 708 distinct units of information in the periodic table. What makes this interesting is that there are a large numbers of young children (and adults for that matter) who can recite, from memory much of the information contained in this list of Pokemon, but it would likely be difficult to find the same number of people who could do that for the periodic table. The point is that the medium of video games appears to have the potential facilitate significant learning. As it turns out, video games are designed to effectively be learning machines (Gee, 2003, 2005). If fact, many games start off with a simple tutorial level that teaches the player the basic mechanics of the game. Throughout the game, the strategy, and tactics needed to complete tasks become more complex while the teaching method gradually switches from an explicit tutorial to an experience based process. Essentially, games teach the player the skills needed to critically evaluate any situation within the game and determine the best course of action. Starcraft 2 (as well as its predecessors Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War) is what is called a “Real Time Strategy” game. Players must obtain various resources and use them to purchase buildings and fighting units. Then, they must fight and defeat their enemy. To play this game successfully, players must manage their time and resources more efficiently than their opponents as each building and unit have a different cost, purpose, and build time. Additionally, much like Pokemon, units have strengths and weakness. A player has to constantly update their strategies throughout the game based on their interactions with the other players, requiring significant planning and critical thinking skills that are honed by players over time. In fact, while Starcraft beginners make less than 100 actions (or decisions) per minute, professionals can make over 400 per minute (Lewis et al., 2011; Latham et al., 2013). Despite evident in-game learning, one concern is that video games can only be used to teach players about game-related information and not about educationally relevant material. However, recent research into the field of digital game based learning (Prensky, 2003, 2005; Pivec, 2007; Hwang and Wu, 2012; also see Young et al., 2012) suggests that this is not the case. Squire (2005) conducted a qualitative case study on a secondary school history class in which he had students play an historical simulation game called Civilization 3 with the intention of having the students learn about history from playing the game. It should be noted that this game was not designed specifically as an educational game (see Girard et al. (2013) for a review of the effect of intentionally educational games). In this game, students take control of a civilization (like the Aztecs or the French, for example) and progress through history developing technology, engaging in simulated warfare and diplomacy, and managing the economies of their empires. Squire (2005) reported that playing this game for educational purposes seemed to benefit students who struggled with traditional education, though students who typically performed well preferred traditional teaching methods. Here is a brief excerpt of an interview with one of the students in this study: “Interviewer: Who do you think invented the alphabet before you played this game? Marvin: The English, because back then they were the classiest and smartest. Interviewer: Now who do you think invented the alphabet? Marvin: Probably the Egyptians with the hieroglyphics. It was the first writing to be done. ” (Squire, 2005) When you play Civilization 3, you have to develop technology based on a set path. For example, you are required to invent the alphabet before you invent other things, like formal mathematics. Therefore, it is possible for this simple video game mechanic to teach players that the alphabet had to be invented in the first place and that it was invented before other things. Therefore, developing science in the game gives students a better idea of when things occurred in history. Another way in which video games are learning machines (Gee, 2003, 2005) is that they are highly motivating and therefore they can induce higher student engagement compared to traditional teaching methods. According to Hamlen (2013), “despite assumptions that children play video games to avoid mental stimulation, children are actually motivated by the challenge and thinking required by video games. ” Squire (2005) reported that Marvin voluntarily, and without provocation, spent time learning more about history from the “civelopedia” which provides players with historically accurate information about their chosen civilizations and other aspects of the game. Improved student engagement using video games was also demonstrated by Stansbury and Munro (2013; Stansbury et al., 2014) who supplemented an undergraduate-level behavioral statistics lecture by having students play the game Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) to generate scores that would be used as dependent variables while teaching the students about factorial research designs. They found, based on a pre-test/post-test comparison, that students who played DDR as part of their lecture showed a greater increase in content knowledge compared to students who received a traditional lecture on the same topic. Even through the inherent content of DDR was not educationally relevant, clever pedagogical use of the game had the desired effect of increasing student engagement with the lecture content.