gaming for education

As an avid computer gamer and a previous player of WoW, the readings for this week are especially interesting for me.  I first read the brief news.com article by Terdiman, in which the future of collective gaming is discussed regarding its application to education and learning.  I think that since the beginning of education-based computer games like Reader Rabbit, Number Munchers, etc., people have always thought “the future” of education would be built around games.  What’s new, which I found fascinating, is how collaborative/collective gaming might help to finally realize the potential for computer games in education.  The Terdiman article cited a pretty simple game that brought together hundreds of thousands of players from around the world to try and solve a problem by creating inventive solutions.  Ultimately, the players broke down into smaller, manageable groups to brain storm the solution and it was a huge success.  And it immediately reminded me of WoW, even before I saw that we had the WoW piece to read.  I found this study to be extremely interesting from both a gaming an academic prospective.  It’s fascinating to read an ethnography of sorts about a virtual culture and identify many of the same social and cultural elements that exist in the real world.  From what I know of the game, WoW is a fully functional social environment with norms, close personal connections, social groups, and warring factions.  What’s more, WoW even has a detailed capitalist/bartering economy in place for all players.  With a platform this developed and complex, why couldn’t we apply this model to education?  As they state in the reading:

“We can envision designing mixed collaboration spaces for elder care, other groups with limited mobility, and corporate team building and training. Loneliness, lack of social support, and increased immobility have been shown to lead to depression in the elderly [22]. A game such as World of Warcraft tailored to the interests of various segments of the elderly population would enable them to make new friends online from their own homes, in the context of an exciting, challenging game with rich content. The game would provide mental stimulation and topics of mutual interest. Mental stimulation and social engagement reduce the risk of dementia [32]”

Clearly, there is limitless application for collective/collaborative games in virtual learning and education.  What’s more, the ability to engage lonely or at-risk people using the virtual networks like those found in WoW can have a dramatically positive impact on people’s lives.  By design, collaborative games promote sharing knowledge and helping others both altruistically and so that they will help you in return.  This greatly expands the amount and quality of resources available to people who are plugged into this virtual environment.  As the researchers state, games like WoW are very effective at teaching complex skill sets without too much explicit instruction.  Rather, players learn from each other and improve upon current techniques by experimenting with their own solutions.  The environment that ensues is as rich in activity as it is in learning and innovation.

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