"I've been gaming since I was a little kid", brags Trent Begin, a TTA at ASSETT.
"Well I was playing Flight Simulator", says TTA Casey Zahorik, pausing dramatically as he leans back in his swivel chair, when I was three years old.
Grant Matheny, ASSETT's technical director, laughs and then confesses. "I didn't play games until I was a teenager. I started late. But my wife," he counters, in a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to regain credibility, "my wife was playing Doom at age three."
At CU Boulder, games are serious business. Games and Education is a growing research field and many educators are beginning to recognize the potential of games as educational tools. There are several initiatives at CU Boulder that focus on this new experiment in education. Scalable Game Design is a National Science Foundation-funded project aimed at introducing Middle School Students to computer science through game design. Another group experimenting with games is The ATLAS Institute, which offers undergraduate courses named after gaming platforms like "Second Life" and "Unity 3D".
"I think these initiatives are only the first step for the future of games and education,"says Kara Behnke, Ph.D. student at the ATLAS Institute. "Games are structured systems of rules that give us a very specific goal to reach. This helps us learn because the game is very effective at illustrating our progress." Also, she explains: "In a game you usually know exactly what you did wrong and are given the support you need to progress forward. Games encourage us to learn from our failures."
Here at ASSETT, the Teaching With Technology staff is testing the idea that games can help students learn by working with departments on specific projects. Matheny, Begin and Zahorik are currently collaborating with the Anthropology Department to create a game that is tailored to their class needs. Using Adventure Maker software as a foundation to build on, the team is creating a virtual Russian town that anthropology students will be able to explore virtually. The game is designed so that students can travel back in time to learn how Russian society was structured in different historical periods.
Another recent commission is from the communications school. Their task, explains Grant Matheny, is very open-ended: "we want to help [students] think in more complex ways about how people collaborate." Although the design work hasn't started yet, they plan to share their initial ideas with students in the communications school so that they can jump-start a dialogue with future users that will be maintained during every stage of the design process.
Matheny, Begin, and Zahorik all experienced the educational benefits of gaming at young ages. "Eve online taught me basic and advanced economics," said Grant Matheny, referring to a complex trade agreement with an Italian player that involved negotiations across language barriers. "And I've learned more about world history through that game than from any history class I've taken." The Teaching with Technology Assistants both agree. Casey Zahorik explains that games helped him to"learn by doing," which increases information retention. Also, Trent Begin explains, "gaming is fun" and the learning that happens is "subtle." Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of learning through games is that gamers often don't realize that they're having an educational experience until after they've learned the material.
Of course, gaming in the classroom is still controversial. Educators worry about bringing games into a class where not all students are tech-savvy. Others are concerned that game elements distract students from real learning. Yet many departments seem willing to experiment and the ASSETT Teaching with Tech staff is confident that once educators hear the success stories, they will be less skeptical. At the recent COLTT conference at CU, the number of presentations focused on gaming and education doubled when compared to last year's conference. It's clear that interest in games is growing and many believe that the concept of games as educational tools will eventually be embraced by the education community at large.
I think it is inevitable that games will be used in the classrooms of the future, says Kara Behnke. In fact, according to Behnke, the real question is not whether teachers will start using games; rather, she wonders, “when will games become the new norm for education?” In her view, this shift might happen sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And why not? In an age where educators are scrambling for better ways to reach their students, any new venture is worth a try. If games have the potential to foster a learning environment that is both fun and challenging, this new experiment in pedagogy may have the potential to enrich the learning experience of students at all levels of education in classrooms across the globe.
Article written by: Ashley E Williams, ASSETT reporter
