Some thoughts from the 1st week readings

The readings of this week have a few major themes. First, our education system is not working. One interesting point that mentioned by Shaffer (2006) is that our educational system was geared to the industrial age, where we need people to perform some routine tasks accurately. So, the demand to do the “right” thing was important at that age. I don’t know whether our education was a result from the needs of the industry, but it is clear that the same type of educational outcomes that we are measuring today doesn’t work for the information age. We are now living in the information age (Akilli, 2007; Galarneau & Zibit, 2007; Prensky, 2007; Shaffer, 2006). The industry now looks for the 21st century skills such as knowledge sharing, creation, collaboration (Galarneau & Zabit, 2007).

The second theme of this week is that game and simulation can be a solution (Akilli, 2007; Galarneau & Zibit, 2007; Prensky, 2007; Shaffer, 2006). Even though some of the authors do not say game is the solution, the authors give a high hope for games to be a solution if it is effectively designed and implemented. Prensky (2007) even foresee that the education/training industry will move to be game-based soon because of the demand of the learners. In other words, because games are so good that people will want it. I may not agree with Prensky (2007) hope because innovation diffusion depends on a lot of factors. Theory of diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 2003) suggest that other factors such as compatiability with other technologies (technology in a loose sense that it does not have to be computing device), and complementarity with other technologies may also affect the diffusion of technology. Obviously, the improvement of technology seems like helping the game movement.

The third theme of this week is complexity. It is safe to suggest that the world is complex. Dorner (1987) provided a very good introduction of complexity. I see two main components in Dorner’s argument. (1) the cognitive components which suggest that human’s mind has limitation to deal with the complexity (2) the affective components, where fear of failure is a key driver to prevent people to deal with complex phenomena effectively. In Dr. Ge’s class, we examine computer as cognitive tools to support cognitive processes. However, I also believe that computer may also support the affective side of the equation. It will be interesting to examine any interaction effect between those two dimensions.

The two books by Shaffer (2006) and Prensky (2007) are more practitioner oriented. They have a lot of good observations, but I haven’t found good support from both books yet. Maybe I can find those in the later chapters. Anyway, they did raise many good issues that game-based design researchers should pay attention to. For example, Prensky (2007) and Akilli (2007) both talked about the addictiveness of game. Yes, game is additive. I was addicted to game, too. But, why it is addictive?

Another good point that Prensky (2007) observed is that gamers have expectations on the games. They are intentional which is an important concept for learning under constructivism. Gamers expect game is better than their previous game. They expect the graphic is better. They expect to network with other people. They expect to play hard. Actually, many of the readings claim that game provide the motivation for the learners to engage, and learning will happen if the game is designed effectively.

I applaud Akilli’s effort to start understand what is game and how can it be implemented in educational context (Akilli, 2007). It is important to understand what is a game, and what we want to get out of the a game before we try to understand how we utilize game as a tool to assist learning. The authors did summarize some definitions of games from other people, and he adds that game should be fun and creative. However, I could not find a working definition for game yet. Actually, it is relatively hard to measure creativity. Fun is a subjective measure, which can be influenced by the society. For example, some boys may find basketball is a fun game, but some other boys may find basketball boring, and they like to play card game instead. In other words, people define fun differently. Actually, this can be an issue for game-based learning if fun is a pre-requisite of a game.

Akilli (2007) uses a terminology called “game-like learning environment”. I find trouble with this terminology when we do not have a working definition of a game. Actually, from the readings we have this week, I feel that (it may not be true) people look at game as a black box. Anything that has some sort of game characteristics can fit into the game-based learning (or we just called them game-like learning environment since we know it is not really a game). Instead, I suggest that we need to examine the components of the game, and match those components with the expectation that we find beneficial to educational environment. Motivation and engagement are two of those big sellers for game-based learning. I think they are some legitimate constructs that we can examine as moderating variables or dependent variables. Also, implementation issues can be factors which affect the success of the game/simulation.

Finally, I have a personal belief that the world is not always fun. So, we should teach our kids that we try to make things fun, but we will also work hard on the boring stuffs. For example, a high school teacher may love to teach, but he/she may not like to deal with parents. A college professor may love to do research, but he/she may not like to deal with administrative issues and get funding. Life is full of examples like that. We, as responsible adults, we need to deal with boring stuffs effectively so that we have energy to work on the fun stuffs. Therefore, I think game-based learning is a good idea, but too much of it may discourage students to work on something that is not really fun, but maybe necessary.