Video+Games+and+the+Future+of+Learning

Video Games and the Future of Learning  David W. Shaffer, Kurt R. Squire, Richard Halverson, James P. Gee (2004) Group Members: Caitlin Green, An Le, Rene Longoria, Servando Vera

=Introduction= toc Learning is most powerful when activities are personally meaningful, experiential, social and epistemological all at the same time. Video games can be a great source of learning because they offer all of these characteristics. Video games offer simulated worlds where individuals gain personal experience by living what they learn. They also offer social communities of practice that individuals can be a part of and learn from. Computers are changing the world around us and video games give us a glimpse of how we might create new and more powerful ways to learn in schools, communities and workplaces. Within a game are social and cultural worlds which assist in the growing knowledge of the game. These worlds help people learn by integrating thinking, social interaction and technology into a game that they are investing time into. Video games are not panacea nor an answer to all educational problems, but they can be a tool used to develop concepts. The question that arises is how can we use the power of video games as a constructive force in schools, homes and at work?

=**Video Games as Virtual Worlds of Learning**=

Video games naturally create virtual worlds that provide the gamer with a context to complete an object or achieve a specific goal. In order to use these virtual worlds for the purpose of education we must change the belief that video games are solely for entertainment. Video games can be so much more than that; they allow people to participate in a social worlds that let them talk, think and act with other members of the community. Players are not just playing a game, they are inhabiting roles that are usually inaccessible to them. A 16 year old girl can become an international financier by playing Lineage//,// while another player can be a government special agent by playing Deus Ex. These virtual worlds provide the gamers or learners concrete realities that words or symbols usually describe. Through playing Lineage a 16 year old girl gains situated understanding with being an international financier. She is trading raw material, buying and selling goods in different parts of the virtual world, and even speculation on currencies.

Schools normally keep students isolated from one another and from the outside world, during class students only interact with other students in the classroom. Video games and virtual worlds bring people together competitively and cooperatively; they create a social community. Virtual worlds can provide rich contexts for learning because they make it possible for players to experiment with new and powerful identities. Websites are created to expand the virtual world. These websites allow for students to participate in discussion forums, trade screenshots of game play, run a radio station dedicated to the game, exchanged saved game files in order to collaborate. Some websites even provide a University section where they teach others to play the game more deeply.

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=From the Fact Fetish to Ways of Thinking= In the early days, [|John Dewey] argued that schools were built on a "fact fetish", where emphasis was placed on learning a body of facts or information, whether it be English, mathematics, history, or any area of learning. The extent to which students can answer questions on these facts on tests was the measure of good learning. However, learning does not just occur through simple memorization of facts or bodies of knowledge, but by doing. Even more so, learning occurs by doing something as part of a larger community of people who share common goals and ways of achieving them. According to Wenger, different communities of practice have different ways of thinking and acting. For example, lawyers act like lawyers, as they are interested in legal issues, have knowledge about the law, and have skills and understandings of thinking like a lawyer.

Epistemiology - A Way of Thinking
Epistemiology of a practice is a way of thinking, which determines how someone in the community decides what questions are worth answering, how to go about answering them, and how to decide when an answer is sufficient. It organizes social practices, identities, and shared values of a community. In these communities of practice, values, knowledge, skills, identities, and values fall into a coherent epistemic frame. For example, if the community of practice is a group with local culture, then the epistemic frame is the grammar of the culture.

Epistemiology in a Virtual World
[|Full Spectrum Warrior] is a video game based on a U.S. Army training simulation in which the player has to act like a modern professional soldier in order to survive and win the game. To give orders to a squadron of soldiers, the player uses buttons on the controller to control the GPS device, radio for support, and communicate with commanders. An instructional manual makes it clear to the player that they must take on the values, identities, and ways of thinking of a professional soldier to play the game successfully. The simulation has a social context of knowing, as the player has to interact with the virtual soldiers to communicate tasks, implement them, and act in concert with everyone involved. Therefore, Full Spectrum Warrior takes advantage of situated learning environments, as the player builds meaning upon the tasks at hand as they navigate through the program. In addition, the player has to understand and transfer skills to different contexts.

Video Games Helps Us "Learn by Doing"
In contrast to Full Spectrum Warrior, where the player, or learner, is guided by the parameters of the epistemic frame of a modern soldier, learners can be pushed in a rich environment with no guidance at all. One learning theory may suggest that without guidance, learners are given the freedom to explore on their own, and therefore trigger creative patterns. However, without a frame or guide, learners are less likely to build upon their knowledge as they lack guidance and support. The promise of video games within education is the development of epistemic games, where ways of thinking are embedded communities of learning to stimulate learning in any context.

=Epistemic Games for Initiation and Transformation= Video games are powerful contexts for learning because virtual worlds make it possible to develop situated understandings, effective social practices, great identities, shared values, and ways of thinking within communities of practice. In order to do this effectively, one must understand how epistemic frames of different communities are developed, maintained, and transformed.

Initiation
Games like Full Spectrum Warrior are not easy to create, but there are communities of subject matter experts that have already done all the work needed; surgeons know how to create more surgeons, soldiers know how to create more soldiers, etc. Because of this infinite pool of subject experts to draw from, there can be an infinite number of epistemic games dealing with a multitude of subjects; biology, history, math, geography, etc. Players can learn biology by working as a surgeon, as they are inhabiting a virtual world and developing an epistemic frame. Building these games requires an understanding of how practitioners develop their ways of thinking and acting, which is done through epistemographies of practice: "detailed ethnographic studies of how the epistemic frame of a community of practice is developed by new members." This inevitably requires a lot of work, but the payoff is that it offers an alternative model for education in which students learn by working as important members of the community, such as doctors, architects, and lawyers.

An example of a game that offers such payoffs is Madison 2200, an epistemic game based on urban planning. In Madison 2200, players work as urban planners in designing a new mall: they get a project directive, they manage a budget, they are required to take citizens concerns into consideration, and they develop a land use plan. Through the process of the game, the players end up learning a great deal about urban planning, but something more astounding happens; because the knowledge is embedded into an enjoyable activity and the knowledge is utilized for a purpose, learning comes easily because the knowledge and skills are learned within their appropriate context. Although this game might not seem as enjoyable as SimCity or Full Spectrum Warrior, it is still enjoyable and they are able to live in an imaginary world as urban planners. Through the game the players develop a new way of thinking and acting as urban planners, and they also have some fun too.

Transformation
In addition to games like Madison 2200 and Full Spectrum Warrior there are also games that try to transform the ways of thinking of a particular professional community. These games attempt to transform an epistemic frame by focusing on new or challenging situations and they require an examination of how the frame of practice is organized and when it can become problematic. An example is the system RootMap, which creates representations of professional knowledge, and suggests new practices in the business world. The multimedia representation of a problem framing strategy can help school administrators examine where their understanding is incomplete or ineffective for dealing with new and problematic situations.

=Epistemic Games and the Future of Schooling= Epistemic games allow players to have freedom to act within the norms of a valued community of practice. With the games like [|Madison 2200] and [|Full Spectrum Warrior] players need to act within these types of norms. For this to work successfully, players must learn to become and think like members of this community. Now think about a student has just played [|Madison 2200] and is walking down a street. She's walked down these streets many times before but because of the game she's noticing things she's never noticed before. This is a great example of situated learning; there has been a transfer from on context to the other. This was able to occur not because this student learned new information but through the information being taught in a different manner.

There aren't many epistemic games in circulation; many of these games that provide the same opportunity for deeply situated learning. Games like [|Rise of Nations] and[| Civilization III] help provide environments for people to be interactive and be able to explore counterfactual historical claims and it also helps players be able to understand the operation complex historical modeling. The game [|Railroad Tycoon] allows players the ability to be the railroad engineers in the 1800s and the face the same type economic and geographic issues they faced. There are many other epistemic games that allow players to be biomechanical engineers, journalists, graphic designers, evolutionary biologist, and even a tailor in Colonial Williamsburg.

Even if the world’s best educational video games were produced and ready to be bought, its not entirely clear if educators or even schools would know what to do with them. So the question that is asked; how might the school leaders and teachers bring these experiments of epistemic games into the school setting? The initial step is for school leaders beyond the games that have become the most popular (e.g. violent, serial killer, time waster) and address the ones that learning opportunities that are presented in the games. If we are able to understand that video games can provide powerful learning environments it can shift the ideas of the current anti-gaming rhetoric. Epistemic games are already being used by corporations, the government, the military and even political groups and through these games they are able to teach facts, principals, and world views. Schools and schools systems must soon start following these same movements or they might be in risk of being swept aside.

=A New Model of Learning= In the past years there has been an increase identification of learning through schooling. In recent times this type of learning has been challenged through the use of technology. With the technology information is literally at someone’s fingertips. Since this occurs people are able to use the technology to create their own learning environments but classrooms haven’t adapted this type of thinking. The type of learning and instruction that is being taught is slowly becoming antiquated because of this new world we are living in. Good teachers and school leaders are the ones who are doing their best to get new types of technologies and new practices: “but mavericks grow frustrated at the fundamental mismatch between the social organization of schooling and the realities of life in a post-industrial, global, high-tech society.” Unfortunately school is being seen as irrelevant by more and more students after primary grades.

A growing idea is that our students will learn from video games. A question that rises is: who will be creating these games that are bases on the learning theories and is socially conscious of educational practices? A long time leader of simulations is the American Army, they have built games that introduce civilians to military ideology. There are even games that help kids with cancer to better treat themselves, simulations to help better surgeons perform surgery more effectively and there games under development for homeland security.

The interest of games is encouraging but most of these games have been produced with the absence of any type of coherent learning theory or an underlying body of research. An important thing we need to understand is: how is inhabiting a virtual world develops situated knowledge. Another thing we must understand is lots of time in the virtual world develops powerful identities and shared values. The most important thing is to use all these understandings to build games the develop players for the epistemic frames of scientist, engineers, lawyers, and other valued practices as well the games that can help develop these transformations of practice for experienced professionals.

With video games there is the potential to be able to change the landscape of education as we know it. Being able to answer these questions will make it possible to use video games to move our education system beyond its traditional academic principles.