Production 2: A Reflection on Games & Learning during Covid 19

     As I read both articles for class, I couldn’t help but think about all the games that were introduced in the classrooms that I have been in as a teacher candidate or occasional teacher, where the goal of these games are to educate students or show learning. These games include, Kahoot, Knowledgehook, RazKids, etc. These games, while enjoyable, may actually suck the fun out of the game, and the game itself can suck the learning out of education, especially deep learning. In the Gee (2008) article, he writes that he does care about the issues of what we lose when video games are turned into serious games (p. 232). He also mentions the term “prosumer”—which is a consumer who doesn’t just passively consume, but produces and transforms (Gee, 2008, p. 236). From my own observations spent in various classrooms and grades, I noticed some students playing these games as passive consumers. In fact, there are rarely any opportunities for them to produce and transform. For example, with RazKids, you get rewards for the number of books you read, and how often you read them, at a specific grade level for reading. Students can easily cheat the system by flipping through books and not actually read through and comprehend them; or they have the help of a peer or adult at home when the teacher is not present.

In this case, students are not actually improving on their reading skills if they are bypassing the very skill that needs exercising. With Knowledgehook, if answers are incorrect, there is no real time feedback, so students are left to their own devices to backtrack and guess where their error lies. This can be troublesome especially for students who are already struggling with the subject/topic of assessment, and thus they usually just leave it without attempting to resolve the issue.

At least with video games, players are easily confronted with their error but are motivated to resolve those difficulties (regardless of the opportunities for real time feedback) because there is a desire to want to be successful in the game or play. Moreover, one can easily argue that this passive consumer attitude can permeate in MMO games like WoW, RuneScape, Conquer, etc. as people can just buy out bots to play for their character for various reasons such as aiming attacks, or to perform mundane tasks that are essential for levelling up a specific skill or general level. However, the act of making your own bot is in and of itself a creative venture that requires a familiarity or mastery of a different type of skill from the game. For example, in Gee’s (2008) article, he talks about a girl who was playing The Sims but ended up learning about using Photoshop to create virtual clothes that were initially unavailable in the game. But because of her endeavour, she was able to share her virtual clothes that took time, effort, discovery and experimentation, with others in the game (p. 234). The same is true for the use of bots in MMO games. I had a friend who wanted his attack to be more powerful and ended up searching up videos on coding using C# so that he could learn how to code his own bot to make that possible. Even though bots are looked down upon in the gaming community, we can appreciate my friend’s production and transformation that Gee (2008) talks about as he is now learning a new skill (coding using C#) to create something that will benefit him in the game world (p. 236). Even De Castell & Jenson (2007) state that “in play…intelligence is adverbial to attention. This means that whatever a person is paying attention to is where his or her intelligence is at work” (p. 131). My friend not only wants to be better in the game to beat the opponents who are not part of his clan, but also wants to learn another skill on his own accord, to make that goal come true. We cannot just brush off my friend as a cheater in the game, because he still works to improve the necessary skills to survive in the game, such as performing the laborious tasks to level up, earn new items and sell unwanted items, however, he just has a little bit of a booster to help him when he attacks, and he can do so proudly because he created the bot himself.

     This leads to my next point that Fullan & Langworthy (2014) talk about in our next class readings, about the change in role of teachers and students. Most teachers complained that students do not have a long attention span, or that they do not respect teachers anymore, so they do not listen (p. 11). But students are looking through the façade, and no longer see teachers as just the experts in knowledge—they do not want to be passive learners anymore (p. 12). These serious games I talked about earlier don’t transform old models of schooling; they just replace the traditional objects with gadgets.

Students are still passively performing tasks; the only difference is that they are doing it on an app or technological device. In another research article that looks at game-based learning by Admiraal, Huizenga, Akkerman & Ten Dam (2011), they first talk about the contrasting attitudes that students have towards games and learning. In fact, they are complete opposites as students are interested, cooperative, results-oriented, competitive, and are actively seeking information and solutions, when it comes to gaming (p. 1186). Yet, when it comes to learning, they are continuously disengaged from the learning experience, as we can see with the teachers who were interviewed by Fullan & Langworthy (2014). With Contagion, students are engaged in health education via an immersive experience, and thus became health literate citizens as they learned about proper hygiene procedures, how to avoid mosquito borne illnesses (checking water sources), and to be aware of food sources and poultry farms whenever there was an outbreak (de Castell & Jenson, 2007, p. 128). They learned about these things by playing the game, and not through passive traditional schooling methods. Furthermore, students learned about the origins of the virus, since they had to find information needed to proceed further in the game (de Castell & Jenson, 2007, p. 120). By allowing students to playfully engage in digital gaming opportunities, teachers will be able to see the learning and knowledge making that students might not otherwise display in a traditional classroom. Going back to the example of the girl who made the virtual clothes and my friend who learned how to code out of sheer will and curiosity, these things would not have happened had they not been able to explore the game. These are extensions of the learning that goes beyond the gaming experience. When students are drawn to the digital games that they play, and exhibit the positive attitudes mentioned before (interested, cooperative, results-oriented, competitive, and actively seeking information and resolutions), they are gaining skills that are not just important for the success in the game, but that can be translated to skills that are applicable and essential in the real world.

References

1. Admiraal, W., Huizenga, J., Akkerman, S., & Ten Dam, G. (2011). The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(3), 1185-1194.

2. de Castell, S. & Jenson, J. (2007). Digital Games for Education: When Meanings Play. Intermédialités / Intermediality, (9), 113–132.

3. Fullan, M. & Langworthy (2014).  A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning. London: Pearson.

4. Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and Portals: Video Games, Learning and Play. American Journal of Play, 1, 2, 229-235.