Personal Enquiry: Education and Interactive Experiences.

'Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.' 

And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly. - Sir Ken Robinson quoting Yeats. TED, 2010.

I feel like I've had quite a varied experience throughout my life with education. I could write a lot about these experiences, both very good and very bad but I'm not going to. Not yet at least. This is a game art blog after all and I promise this does involve at least games. Instead I'd like to share with you my thoughts on the current state of education and how I think we should move forward. My word count is limited so I'll be interspersing this post with videos from my favourite channels on YouTube which happen to be highly relevant to this topic.

Education hasn't really changed in hundreds of years. The students go to class, the teacher delivers them knowledge. The student is then expected to retain the knowledge until an appropriate time for it to be regurgitated. Imagine if a field like medicine evolved at this pace.

'Schools are organized on factory lines, ringing bells, separate facilities, separate subjects. We still educate children by batches, we put them through the system by age group. Why do we do that? Why do we have this assumption that the most important thing these kids have in common is their date of manufacture?' (If you enjoyed that, you may also enjoy 'Do schools kill creativity?')

While writing this I'm reminded of an English class at secondary school. I can't remember what book we were studying but I remember feeling the need to express to my teacher that I found it boring. He responded "It's not my job to make it exciting". Suffice it to say I responded in a manner that was admittedly inappropriate and received a detention. But I did strongly disagree. In the modern world, a teacher has no place as merely a knowledge dispenser and rule enforcer. The focus for any good teacher should be the method of delivery and student engagement because a much better dispenser already exists. The internet.

I struggled a lot with secondary school. Mainly just with actually going to school. I fully sympathize with my parents, I was a nightmare. I would argue that I could learn more from home, but we both knew I'd spend the day playing computer games. Expecting a teenager to spend the day learning from raw information on the internet is no different to expecting a teenager to spend the day self-teaching in a library. 

The problem here is the way the information is presented to the student. Engagement is paramount to retention. And what better way to increase student engagement than through an interactive experience? What better way for education to grant a sense of accomplishment and reward than through a game?

The idea of interactive education isn't a new one. In 1967, Logo Programming successfully presented basic maths and programming concepts in a fun, interactive and accessible format. Then, in 1979; Lemonade Stand introduced players to economics through very simple and compelling game mechanics. Lemonade Stand was also very successful and inspired a plethora of retail simulation games, my current favourite being Cart Life.

While it existed as a screen-less teletype game in 1971, The Oregon Trail didn't hit the main stream market until it was released on the Apple II in 1985. Originally designed to teach children about life as a settler on the Oregon trail in the 19th century, the game became a pop-culture phenomenon. The Oregon Trail is remembered as the first, true fusion of education and video game. It is significant because not only does it excel at presenting information to the player; it contextualizes that information, creating an engaging and relatable experience.

The Oregon Trail.

Also released in 1985, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? was met with massive success. This is an equally notable contribution as it stands to demonstrate that even a stereotypically mundane subject such as geography can be greatly enhanced when built into a game. Conversely; games such as Math Blaster and Number Munchers stray to far into purely learning as their primary objective. This is the start of 'the divide' between educational games and entertainment games discussed further in the video below. 

Both Math Blaster and Number Munchers were released in 1987 and while they are both great games in their own right; I believe we have yet to see a truly excellent, entertaining maths game. Granted, this is a particularly difficult task but if we can make virtual farming compelling; maths can't present much more of a challenge.

So how effective are games in the classroom? So far I've touched on the problems of our current education system and highlighted some historical educational games. But how effective is this method of learning really?

While research into this field is growing, I'd like to talk about a particular study by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta). In 2001, Becta produced an evaluation report on the effectiveness of games such as The Sims and Age of Empires in the classroom. The report noted that learner engagement increased significantly, as did team work and critical thinking skills. On the other hand, maintaining learner focus on relevant factual content was more difficult. 

What's remarkable to me here is the significant and obvious benefits, despite the study being conducted predominantly using games that were not intended as educational tools. If you still need convincing however and you have a spare 30 minutes, why not try it for yourself? A subject that most of my readers in the UK will not be familiar with is U.S. Civics and the bill of rights; so the game Do I Have a Right? is ideal. Play it for half an hour and let me know what you think. Was it enjoyable and engaging? Did you learn anything?

I'd like to talk about the design principles of educational games but that's a topic for another time. The last thing I'd like cover is tangential learning and how even games designed purely to entertain can lay the framework for education.

'Many designers are missing out on a prime opportunity to enrich their audiences lives'.

I didn't fully appreciate the power of tangential learning until earlier this year. While helping plan our family trip to Italy; I asked my sister "what do you want to see in Rome?" She sincerely responded "the stuff in Assassins Creed II". Initially I found this quite amusing, scoffed and rolled my eyes. Then one day, while walking back from Campo de Fiori we found ourselves inside a museum dedicated to the machines of Leonardo da Vinci. Seeing her walk around and engage with the exhibits, I realized her experiences in Assassins Creed had made the contraptions exciting and relatable. While it may not be educational, Assassins Creed enhances the subject, enriching the player beyond just the time they spent playing the game.

I've written this because I feel we as experience creators should be aware of these opportunities. The chance to enrich the lives of our audience is not something to overlook. So how does this relate to the future of education? It's simple; a child's education should first and foremost enrich their life. And we have all the tools to do just that. The internet, metrics and all the lessons we've learned from nearly 50 years of developing interactive experiences could be implemented to create something very exciting.

I'd like to close this with a video by CGP Grey. I find it to be one of the most inspirational videos I've ever seen and having read this post, I'd love to know what your thoughts are. Whatever the future holds for games, for education, we are living through one of the most exciting periods of history. We are the internet generation. Bring on the learning revolution.

References:

1. Dumbleton, T and J,Kirriemuir. (2006). Digital games and education. In: J, Rutter and J, Bryce Understanding Digital Games. London: SAGE. p223-239.

2. J, Friedman. (). From Plain Old Games to Gamification: A History of Making Education Fun. Available: http://www.skilledup.com/blog/an-annotated-opinionated-history-of-gamification-in-education/. Last accessed 30th Nov 2013.

3. Terry Heick. (2012). A Brief History Of Video Games In Education.Available: http://www.teachthought.com/video-games-2/a-brief-history-of-video-games-in-education/. Last accessed 30th Nov 2013.

Images and video for illustrative purposes only, all rights and credit remain with their respective owners.