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KymBuchanan.org > Playful Interest Bridging >
December 7, 2003
Class: CEP 930 Educational Inquiry
Instructor: Rand Spiro, PhD
College of Education, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA
Computer games offer tantalizing potential for education. Many people enjoy playing computer games as a recreation, and voluntarily seek out challenging games. Such engagement is desirable and elusive in formal education. Thus, some education researchers try to adapt or create computer games for more serious learning, to combine the engagement of recreational gaming with traditional curricular objectives. Unfortunately, computer games are a relatively new phenomenon. The design of recreational computer games is poorly understood. (Crawford, 2003) So the design and use of computer games for education is even less understood.
As researchers try to expand that understanding, they need to consider some critical issues from education, computer games, and the intersection of teaching using games. Researchers need to remember the primary advantage of games: interactivity that fosters engagement. A model of teaching using games must also accommodate the evolution and diversity of technologies and practices in education and gaming. Researchers must study games with a broad awareness of institutional and societal implications. Finally, games foster a unique sub-culture, so researchers must strive for a minimum level of appropriate cultural competence. This is not a comprehensive list of issues. Rather, it captures some critical considerations, to illustrate the unique nature of teaching using games, and the general nature of research, education, and gaming.
The primary advantage of computer games is interactivity. The playful challenges of a game are more important than the quality of its characters, setting, story, graphics, sound, or interface. (Crawford, 2003) These artistic and technical dimensions can enhance the play experience, but they can't mitigate unsatisfying gameplay. Thus, researchers must understand interactivity to understand games.
Good interactivity is dynamic and compelling. While Marc Prensky classifies computer-based quizzes as simple games, they represent the palest form of interactivity. (2001) And while the recreational games industry has developed a variety of game types, Clark Aldrich suggests that education may need to develop whole new "genres" of games and gameplay. (Buchanan, in press) Both game designers and researchers need to consider the same question: "What does the player do?" The answer should drive design, and help illuminate actual and potential learning.
Unfortunately, interactivity can be difficult to observe. Players may be demonstrating observation, contemplation, and decisions through key strokes or mouse clicks. Or they may be wildly guessing. This ambiguity isn't unique to educational software. Any multiple choice instrument, for learning or assessment, is hindered by such ambiguity, which can undermine its external validity. "Research offers ways of reducing uncertainty but not removing it." (Shulman, 1999, p. 163)
Qualitative observation of players can help triangulate success in a game. Researchers should hypothesize and search for signs of intention (e.g., mouse movement directly to a menu choice instead of randomly roving). Speed or motor control aren't necessarily indicative of intention. Researchers should query players about their interaction with the game, either synchronously (e.g., think aloud protocols) or asynchronously (e.g., written reflections, debriefing interviews). Multiple measures can triangulate correlation among intention, in-game success, and learning.
Computer games continue to evolve in interactivity, especially those game genres which emphasize strategy or teamwork. In general, if the gameplay is more free or "open-ended," the successes of the player are more likely a result of deliberation and intention. The freedom of a strategy game can be figuratively described as a series of multiple choice questions with many right answers and many distracters.
If the purpose a game is to teach sophisticated skills and knowledge, the interactivity must be sufficiently sophisticated to recruit and assess such skills and knowledge. For example, suppose a teacher wants to use a game to teach team problem-solving. In most computer games, interaction between a human-controlled character and a computer-controlled character is only possible through a "dialog tree." At any point in a conversation, the player has only a handful options, which cause the computer-controlled character to respond in a predetermined way. In contrast, when human-controlled characters interact with each other, they usually have the unlimited options of normal speech, gestures, and responses. A game for teaching team problem-solving will have greater external validity if it fosters human-to-human interaction, with a respectively vast number of options for interaction.
Attributing success to intention, rather than chance, is more plausible in games with greater freedom.
In summary, researchers should focus on interactivity when creating designs and selecting methods of inquiry. This will increase the defensibility of their methods. It will also help ensure that educational games preserve the kinds of rich interactivity that makes them appealing to players.
The technologies and practices of education and games are continually evolving. A theoretical framework for teaching using games must be accommodate such evolution, including new media (e.g., hypermedia), new game genres, and contiguous theories for classrooms and learning (e.g., cooperative learning). Such contiguous theories are contentious, because education research is in an emergent or revolutionary period (as opposed to a period of "normal science"). (Schoenfeld, 1999) General theories of computer games are also still emerging. Both education and gaming include a vast diversity of cases in a "ill-structured" fashion. For example, in gaming, it's difficult to theoretically encompass the diversity and evolution of every game from PONG to EverQuest. Ideas like "fun" are difficult to define without using specific examples.
PONG and EverQuest 2: A theoretical framework must accommodate such diversity and evolution.
Game researchers should look to contiguous theories for methods and models. For example, they may find design experiments useful. Allan Collins compares design experiments to Consumer Reports. "The goal is to look at many different aspects of the design and develop a qualitative and quantitative profile that characterizes the design in practice." (1999, p. 292) Design experiments are compatible with Activity Theory, a popular model for studying games. "For an Activity Theorist, the minimal meaningful context is the dialectical relations between human agents (subjects) and that which they act upon (objects) as they are mediated by tools, language, and socio-cultural contexts." (Squire, 2002) (see also Kaptelinin and Cole, n.d.) As a complex, ill-structured phenomenon, gaming doesn't yield to simple explanations. Building a theoretical framework will require flexibility in thinking and practice (much like a good game).
Since theories in both education and gaming are still emerging, researchers need to be clear and meticulous about their methods, to support community-wide dialog and synthesis.
Much of education research "stimulates precisely the kinds of reforms it then intends to study." (Shulman, 1999, p. 159) In the case of teaching using games, there's explicit advocacy for a specific reform. But outside the subculture of gaming, computer games are poorly understood and even maligned. Furthermore, some people are skeptical about the rigor and utility of education research in general. (Lagemann, 1999, p. 8) Thus, researchers who study teaching using games must be especially sensitive to their audience in education and beyond. Rigorous research and clear arguments are always important, but especially when arguing for controversial reforms.
Researchers may need to include considerable exposition about contemporary games and players, to support clear, compelling arguments. What people "see or hear is interpreted through the filters of their own knowledge and experience, both professional and informal." (Ball & Lampert, 1999, p. 379) It's difficult for people to imagine the potential of educational games if their only frame of reference is PacMan, or inflammatory hyperbole about real world violence and ultra-violent games.
Some of the misunderstanding of computer games stems from persistently mistaking correlation for causation. For example, playing violent computer games may correlate with violent behavior. This might lead governments to ban violent games, in an attempt to reduce violent behavior. But the correlated behaviors may be caused by a third thing. People with a predisposition towards violence may play computer games as catharsis. Banning the games may deprive them of this relief, and actually increase violence. Causation can only be inferred from experimental controls with random assignment of subjects. In education and in society, researchers have a duty to educate their audience on what is truly known and unknown about computer games.
Education research is inherently political and culturally volatile. (Bruner, 1999) In particular, decisions about educational technology tend to highlight issues in pedagogy and policy. Software-centered instruction is sometimes seen as a vehicle for "teacher proof" curricula, or even a vanguard for the elimination of teachers. Researchers need to be sensitive the politics and fears of their audience. For example, there is a significant difference in rhetorical nuance between "educational games" and "teaching using games." The former describes artifacts, while the latter describes a pedagogy and set of skills. I deliberately favor the latter in my writing and professional interactions.
Mitchell and Haro suggest that research can be superficially categorized as "inquiry for conclusion" or "inquiry for decision." (1999, p. 42) For studies of teaching using games, the results are both revealing and prescriptive. Researchers should present successful designs as both insightful and useful.
My position on many of these issues comports with Ann Lieberman's admonition that "researchers have the responsibility to change lives, not just describe them." (1992, in Walker, 1999, p. 238) Both education and computer games are emotionally charged and poorly understood domains. Game researchers must be more than scientists: they must be tactful and persuasive diplomats between cultures.
Vanessa Walker quotes Lieberman while discussing the need for cultural competence in education research. She warns that a researcher's cultural identity can affect interactions with research subjects. (Walker, 1999) Computer games are more than artifacts to be played. They are the center of a thriving hobby and subculture.
Computer games are a moderately expensive technology, so researchers should consider the economic background of players. Researchers should examine a gamer's access to games, where games are played, parents' attitudes about games, teachers' attitudes about games, and similar sociocultural details.
While gaming may seem like a unified subculture to an outsider, it's actually composed of many smaller communities (e.g., around specific games or types of games), with their own Web sites, "clans" (i.e., clubs), and other epicenters. Each smaller community, in turn, has hierarchies and radii of participation, from occasional players to community leaders.
Like many subcultures, gamers are somewhat elitist and insular. As Walker warns, the culture of education research may conflict with the cultures it studies. Some gamers may distrust researchers, since many outsiders either don't "get" gaming or misrepresent it. Gamers may be more likely to confide in other gamers. Yet gamers may also hold prejudiced views about their objects of affection.
Researchers should read Walker and similar scholars, to consider the cultural competence they need to earn the trust of gamers. They should consider what cultural expectations students will bring to educational games. They should become or recruit "cultural diplomats," who appreciate and can protect the interests of education and gaming. Since educational games are anomalies in both domains, researchers need to use the perspectives of both domains to see clearly.
Teaching using games depends on fun, educational, safe games. Educators may have difficulty imagining how games could be fun without being useless or potentially dangerous (e.g., violent). Gamers generally see games as safe, but may expect educational games to be boring. People unfamiliar with education or games will have even greater difficulty understanding the intersection.
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Fun |
Boring |
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Educational, |
Reality? |
Gamers |
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Useless, Dangerous |
Educators |
Outsiders |
Some possible perspectives on educational games.
Researchers should respect the perspectives of each culture. As members of either or both cultures, their own perspective may be skewed by loyalties and familiarity. Since some degree of membership aids cultural competence, overt attention to such possible distortion is the best solution. Researchers should also find methods for "making the familiar strange." For example, researcher/gamers may want to collaborate with researcher/nongamers to foster constructive debate about the perceived and actual merits of games or teaching practices.
This analysis has tried to illuminate some critical issues in studying teaching using games. Researchers must consider many issues, for the sake of internal and external validity, and as responsible members of education and society. Such consideration is worthwhile, because games are potentially powerful tools for teaching and learning.
Ball, D. L., & Lampert, M. (1999). Multiples of evidence, time, and perspective: Revising the study of teaching and learning. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 371-398). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Bruner, J. (1999). Postscript: Some reflections on education research. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 399-409). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Buchanan, K. (in press). Frontier life #5: Clark aldrich. Joystick101.org. At http://www.joystick101.org.
Collins, A. (1999). The changing infrastructure of education research. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 289-298). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Kaptelinin, V., & Cole, M. (n.d.). Individual and collective activities in educational computer game playing. Retrieved October 25, 2003, 2003, from http://129.171.53.1/blantonw/5dClhse/publications/tech/Kaptelinin-Cole.html.
Lagemann, E. C., & Shulman, L. S. (1999). Introduction: The improvement of education research: A complex, continuous quest. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. xiii-xxi). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Mitchell, T. R., & Haro, A. (1999). Poles apart: Reconciling the dichotomies in education research. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 42-62). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schoenfeld, A. H. (1999). The core, the canon, and the development of research skills. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 166-202). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Shulman, L. S. (1999). Professing educational scholarship. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 159-165). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Squire, K. (2002). Cultural framing of computer/video games. Game studies, 2(1), n/a. Retrieved 12/6/2002 from http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/squire/.
Walker, V. S. (1999). Culture and commitment. In E. C. Lagemann & L. S. Shulman (Eds.), Issues in education research (pp. 224-244). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Created by Kym Buchanan | http://KymBuchanan.org | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
