A lot of modern students spend as much time playing video games as they do attending school, according to research by University of Indiana.
Some may view that as a shocking affirmation that video games are eroding the education of an entire generation, but the U.S. Department of Education sees it as an opportunity; a chance to reinvent education in a way that makes it more relevant to today's student.
"If you look at the life of a student ... a lot of students play on average about 10,000 hours of video games by the time they are graduating high school. That is almost the same amount they are spending in schools," said Erik Martin, the U.S. Department of Education's Games for Learning lead. "You can imagine a lot of the time which of the two activities they might feel more engaged in or more relevant.
"If you can take that experience of getting outside of school and make it feel just as relevant and just as compelling when they're in school learning stuff and doing stuff and doing something that's interesting and educational, that's that bridging we want to sort of provide."
Later this month, the U.S. Department of Education holds its first Games for Learning Summit in New York City, a gathering of educational experts, students, teachers, game publishers and developers. Summit organizers hope to use the event to help break down the barriers that exist between the interests of game developers and needs of educational games. The outcome, organizers hope, will be new ways to make and distribute engaging and educational video games to classrooms.
"I think the education community is ready to really use technology in innovative ways," said Richard Culatta, the director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education. "But I think we are largely dependent on the people who are building these tools and solutions to provide apps that meet educational needs.
"Part of the message we are trying to send here is, if you're building and designing games for learning you have to connect and work with teachers and with school leaders to make sure you are building games that are meeting the needs."
Among the sessions are two from massive game-maker Ubisoft. The publisher will have developers at the summit to talk about its rhythm-meets-education guitar game Rocksmith and the health benefits of dance game Just Dance. Perhaps most surprisingly, the publisher will also be talking about its incredibly popular action, assassination game Assassin's Creed and a game it published about the first World War.
"From the very first Assassin's Creed, which took place during the Third Crusade, to the latest, Assassin's Creed Unity, the development teams have gone to great lengths to be historically accurate on multiple levels," said Michael Beadle, associate director of public relations at Ubisoft. "Over the years we've heard of universities across the U.S. using the games to engage students, compare the in-game history with the history they learned in class or simple to show students what these periods of history looking like visually."
Beadle points to the level of high definition detail in Assassin's Creed 2's representation of the Renaissance architecture and work with key cultural and linguistic experts to include an accurate representation of the Kanien'kesha:ka (Mohawk) Nation in Assassin's Creed 3, as examples.
"Each game has a database where players are able to further explore and learn about key historical moments they have played through or about a building they just passed or climbed," he said. "History is a core component of the Assassins' Creed franchise and one that we know has taught millions of players over the years about key characters and historical events by experiencing pivotal moments in history."
The day-long summit is the latest sign that the Department of Education recognizes the power of games for learning. And, Culatta says, the department is committed to fostering a broader adoption of high quality games for education.
In fact, he says it's an inevitability that games will become an important part of education in the future.
The summit is a direct response to President Barack Obama's ConnectED initiative, a push to provide, among other things, internet connectivity to schools across the country. That connectivity made the idea of using games to transform learning more practical.
"Along with that comes this challenge of what do we do with that connectivity?," said Culatta. "How do we use it to have more than electronic text books which is not the goal.
"There's this big responsibility to say, 'How do we create really engaging sort of creative materials and simulations, etcetera for students to use?'"
About half a year ago the department held the first ever White House Game Jam, which brought in well-known game developers from the around the world to build games that could teach specific curricular standards.
"It was a great success," he said. "That was sort of the first piece of it."
Following the White House Game Jam the department released a developer's guide that outlined ten ways apps, games and tools can be used to transform learning.
The summit is the next piece of the solution; a larger conversation that involves a lot of people both from the game industry and the education world on how games can be used to make learning engaging.
It comes at a time when not only the government has come to recognize the power and possibilities of gaming, but society.
"There was a perception before that games were this luxury technology and were maybe something that was really cool and really exciting, but not scalable," Martin said. "But now there is an opportunity to see games as solving real educational problems. Video games can really provide formative, quality assessment about how a kid tackles a problem and how they fail and overcome the challenges around a certain context a game provides them.
"This is not about looking at games because they are cool or they are fun, they're a real educational solution."
Culatta is excited that games could also help educators tackle long-lived, difficult problems, like closing the equity gap or getting students to become more engaged and involved in the community.
"We're excited about this event as the start of a much larger conversation about how to bridge two worlds that can be mutually supportive of each other but for so long have been siloed," he said.
As for Ubisoft, it's already onboard with bridging those worlds.
"Ubisoft recognizes that a number of our video games have the ability to bridge the gap between entertainment and education in a way that fans and players have come to both appreciate and enjoy," Ubisoft's Beadle said. "As an industry, we certainly need to continue to find ways to encourage, educate and inspire students of all ages. Knowing the games we've developed will help someone learn to play guitar, become fascinated with history or stay active through dancing is amazing and this is what makes being part of this summit so important."
Cullata hopes the summit will spark an interest in others holding conversations like the one happening later this month in New York.
"I don't know we need to be the ones leading all of those," he said. "It may be that other people pick that up and run with it, but I think it's sending a clear signal to the country that this is a conversation we need to have.
"How do we leverage the great things we've learned about building compelling games to improve learning experiences? That conversation I hope will take off and I think it will."
Good Game is an internationally syndicated weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Brian Crecente is a founding editor and News Editor of Polygon.
Comments
And the great thing is is that this is already happening. After Portal 2 came out a lot of schools began to use it in classes as a way to teach kids about more basic aspects of physics and just to present them with logic puzzles. I think that one of the main inspirations for the Perpetual Testing Initiative actually came from teachers wanting to build courses for their students if I remember correctly.
But I think that this has the potential to help remove some of the stigma about video games that the general public still seems to possess. Because not only could a game like Portal 2 help in science classrooms, it can also teach kids a lot about effective writing. The writing in that game is some of my favorite and I think there are plenty of games that could also fall into that category that aren’t M-rated like GTA or Bioshock. So while there will obviously be games designed specifically for classroom interactions, I think that there are already plenty of games that could be analyzed like how movies are analyzed in English classrooms (that’s something my senior AP English class did at least).
Genuinely glad to see that the powers that be are realizing that video games aren’t just mindless nonsense and instead a great medium for ideas and problems to be expressed.
By SkyJW on 04.13.15 11:47am
I guess the DOE never heard of Math Blasters.
By PolyHere on 04.13.15 11:50am
The problem is that Math Blasters among a lot of educational games are seen as edutainment rather than gaming with educational purposes. If you look at the Oregon Trail, how awesome would it be to integrate that aspect of the game into how the Pioneers worked and tell people to get to a certain point and then discuss about it in class?
By Kirielson on 04.13.15 11:51am
Not trying to be combative, but what exactly is the difference between edutainment and gaming with education purposes? Seems like semantics to me. The scenario you described using Oregon Trail is pretty much exactly how it played out in my grade school classroom 20 years ago.
P.S. I just realized The Oregon Trail video game is over 40 years old.
By PolyHere on 04.13.15 12:27pm
It seems semantical, but it has to do with intent. For instance, let’s take Bioshock, there’s a lot of education on an artistic and literary level to come from it thus being educational. However, it isn’t edutainment where the driving force is to educate.
By Kirielson on 04.13.15 1:12pm
It seems like edutainment is educational material with entertainment added in, whereas we need the foundation to be the game with the educational material added in. I personally think Oregon trail is a bad example of "edutainment" because it was a great game at the time. When I played Oregon Trail, I felt like I was just playing a game. When I played Math Blasters, I thought "this still kind of sucks but it’s better than doing worksheets". IMO the key is to make an educational game that kids would choose to do over preferred activities and not just over schoolwork.
By DankyKang on 04.13.15 4:16pm
Oh that wasn’t an example of edutainment but exactly what you said.
By Kirielson on 04.13.15 9:02pm
So much better than flash cards. I dream of the day that homework is reaching high scores instead of filling in blanks.
By veneretio on 04.13.15 12:16pm
Evidently DOE never played this in Jr. High.
By Schnydz on 04.13.15 12:42pm
I remember my teacher in 7th grade was (and still is) a big video game fan. He had 7 computers laid out in the classroom (certainly more than the average english teacher) and he had them all outfitted with MAME so that when we were done with our classwork we could get on the computer as a reward if we did well. I understand the concept here is not the same but I always was motivated to do well on my classwork so I could just game out for a couple minutes before my next class.
By Orockz on 04.13.15 1:11pm
But aren’t they trying to leverage the "cool" and "fun" aspects to provide an educational solution….
Oh that’s right if its fun it can’t be educational! Behold the thinking that has allowed society to construct schooling in a way that drives droppout rates and anti-intellectual sentiment.
By Gamer8585 on 04.13.15 1:18pm
I’m with all the other old fart commentators not understanding what is new or different about any of this. games have been in the classroom for decades.
By TheReyRocka on 04.13.15 1:30pm
By PolyHere on 04.13.15 1:38pm
that. is one. badass. haircut.
By TheReyRocka on 04.13.15 2:17pm
This is really no different than using movies in the classroom.
99% of this boils down to creating a solid curriculum that includes (and is not solely about) a game or games…that is to say, unless you have a game design class, etc. This is where I can see "Let’s Plays" shine.
Not only that, a majority of games like Assassins Creed may be deemed to have questionable content, so a teacher may have a tough time getting something like that approved. Or will have to do a lot of workarounds to actually show the value.
I remember reading a comment or an article, I forget which, about a teacher who used some MMO to teach certain concepts in class…and that’s great!
I also remember playing Myst in school a looong time ago. I didn’t really learn anything though, and that’s sad because there was an opportunity.
Regardless, I think the reason why "edugames" existed prior to this because you eliminate that sense of inappropriateness, and if you hand over a controller to a kid and say, "Play this level of Bloodborne, " You’re going to end up with: 1. A call from mom, 2. Or a broken controller.
It’s also equitable. When you give someone Oregon Trail any teacher/student can use it. When you have a directed curriculum and know nothing about video games, those teachers that do know about them, should be able to get that much more out of the content.
By snackyj on 04.13.15 2:50pm
I’ll be perfectly honest here: having worked in public education for several years has made me highly suspect of any opinion the DoE has. To the point where the simple fact they think a thing is good makes me question it when I wouldn’t have before.
There are two things the DoE is good at: spending money unnecessarily, and then going back and changing their mind about how they should spend it. There’s little else they do well. The fact that any education happens at all is a minor miracle, and the sole result of amazing teachers who care far more than any monetary incentive could explain.
By Starbuck13 on 04.13.15 3:43pm
I remember growing up on video games when I was a kid, but I started (outside of some NES games with my dad) on educational ones. There was this series called "Jump Start # Grade" for the computer that I made it a point of to beat the grade ahead of the one I was going into (so I would beat Jump Start 3rd grade while in 1st/early 2nd). Part of that was just my parents installing a good "ask questions, read what you can, and always try to better yourself" attitude in me, but the games themselves were actually fun, and when I was a kid I was always thinking "that was fun!" instead of "I’m learning!" even though in the end I was learning some basic fundamentals for a strong education. That’s the way to do this.
Of course, I did play some Bill Nye The Science Guy game when I was 8 or 9 where the storyline had a meteor was going to collide with the planet if you didn’t stop it (on some sort of fake timer), but I got so scared I would mess up that I decided if I stopped playing it the meteor would never hit the earth, so maybe my logic skills weren’t progressing as quick lol.
By xPutNameHerex on 04.13.15 6:32pm
I think this is going to be a tough aspect of the industry to tackle. Sure there are methods of education implementation for "surface level" learning, i.e. intro to certain concepts, but when we need to get down to the nitty-gritty of learning a "hard" subject (Math, Science, Tech), I think that will be the hardest aspect to overcome between video games and education. A lot of people have an aversion to "education" or "things they have to learn but aren’t that interested in", and especially gimmicks, the latter of which the game industry has seen and introduced multiple times. Hopefully all goes well and our inventive and intuitive minds will pull through.
By DTreats on 04.14.15 10:32am
The opportunity here is much bigger than "VR Math Blasters" or even Minecraft/Kerbal. It’s about getting educators to recognize the skills being developed in games that don’t have an overt educational message. E.g. collaboration, leadership and analytics skills are central to most team-based e-sport games (LOL / DOTA). It’s about educators finding ways to engage kids who are switched off in the classroom, but switched on by games. That’s only possible if the educator knows enough about the game to incorporate it.
As I understand it, that’s the purpose of the summit – starting the dialogue between educators and pedagogy thought leaders with game developers so both sides can learn from each other.
By Wes Sonnenreich on 04.14.15 10:19pm
The simulation aspect of games can be a link for education, but really it comes down to translating teaching into interactive technology that kids already use. Paper text books are a joke to me when cheapo tablets and e-readers exist, and things can go further from there.
My main issue as someone that went through the American education system, is less standardized tests that prize memorization, and more creative problem solving that requires application of knowledge…the latter being what actual jobs ask of you.
Also, requiring a basic finance class in high school so teens know how to value, invest and handle money would be good.
By Rathorial on 04.16.15 2:05am