Serious Games (Owen)

I took a look at the speakers presentations on the web from the Serious Games summit and found myself interested not in a game particularly but the argument for games as a serious learning device. (We must defeat the Chinese!)

I pulled this from Merrilea J. Mayo's powerpoint:
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Preliminary finding of international comparisons (TIMSS, PISA) is that US students learn too much, too superficially, without understanding anything.
From learning theory, we know some attributes assist deep learning

Experiential learning (you do it, you learn it): Active participation; decisions that have consequences. Typical of immersive games.

Inquiry-based learning (what happens when I do this?): exploration in games.

Authenticity (the more like real-life the learning situation, the more easily learners will transfer the information to real life): virtual worlds

Self-efficacy (if you believe you can do it, you will increase your chances of succeeding): rewards & levels in games

Goal setting (you will make more progress if working towards a well-defined goal): game goal

Continuous feedback: student in conventional classroom gets to ask only 0.11 questions/hr. In tutoring, student gets 20-30 questions/hr. (Fletcher, J.D. “Technology, the Columbus Effect, and the Third Revolution in Learning”, Institute for Defense Analysis, 2001. ). Carnegie-Mellon Algebra Tutor increases TIMSS scores by 30%. What result for games???

Cooperation (team learning): Studies of traditional learning show cooperative learning results in about a 50% improvement over either solo or competitive learning (meta-analysis of 122 studies by Johnson et al, Psych. Bull 89 (1981) 47-62. MMOG’s.

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The average time spent by teenagers in video game play is 5-8 hours/week. This is almost exactly equal to the time spent on homework by college-bound high school students.

Comments (7)

Andy:

Do you think games are good for learning? If so, why? Are games good for education because they teach us to think like the computer - the tool that we use to access more and more information these days? The computer as brain prosthesis? Or, is it just more fun?

Posted by Andy | October 23, 2006 9:56 AM

Posted on October 23, 2006 09:56

mayo Cinco on de:

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Posted by mayo Cinco on de | May 7, 2008 5:39 AM

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