Games and Virtual Worlds

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Back to Primers

Authors: Linda Polin, David Gibson, Shuchi Grover, Cynthia D’Angelo
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Overview

Computer-based games and virtual worlds provide opportunities for learners to be immersed in situations in which they can experience and get close to phenomena and processes. This immersion helps them develop tacit/implicit understanding and intuitions about such phenomena and processes as they think about choices, take action, and see the impact of their decisions in a meaningful context. These opportunities can be applied to school topics, enabling new genres where school learning becomes “hard fun” or a “serious game.” Games are increasingly being seen as an attractive use of technology to enhance learning, and researchers and designers are actively investigating the many ways that games and game-like features can be implemented to motivate and increase student learning. Some genres of games motivate learners to work hard at learning; games can also provide opportunities to interact with phenomena and contexts (e.g. the spread of an infectious disease) that would otherwise not be available in a classroom (Barab & Dede, 2007; Rosenbaum, Klopfer & Perry, 2007).


A game of Newtonian physics (from the Cyberlearning Community Report).

Although games as a medium of teaching are maturing, more extensive research on deeper learning of concepts beyond simple engagement is needed before it can be conclusively established that games are indeed beneficial in learning contexts. As with all learning technologies that have the potential to engage and engender critical thinking and deeper learning, it depends on the specific game and the design of the learning experience with it. It is difficult to get the integration of games and learning right. Without iterative design improvement which incorporates measurement of learning outcomes in addition to measurement of usability and game play characteristics, impacts on learning are unlikely. Some of the best results in recent years have emerged from virtual worlds through thoughtful design of the learning environment that leveraged what we know about how children learn, especially in collaborative, technology-mediated spaces. These required iterative design-based research studies that helped create the right balance of engaging narratives, roles, and inquiry-based learning that incorporates student agency and choice.

The research literature suggests three different perspectives on designing games for learning. In the design perspective with the longest history, games have been viewed as conduits or vehicles for the delivery of curricular content. This perspective first arose in classroom use of titles such as Oregon Trail, Lemonade Stand, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? These games succeeded in large part due to their interesting storylines and ability to provide learners with engaging opportunities to problem solve in authentic contexts. There were also other successful games such as Math Blaster (and many similar games), where game levels were imposed on unrelated content. These provided extrinsic motivation to increase student engagement in mathematics tasks, however pedagogically they were little more than drill exercises (Bruckman, 1999).

Second, with the growing sophistication of game play and its rise in the general population, educators have looked for game elements or “game mechanics” that can be borrowed and transferred to educational settings to improve engagement. One example is gamification (Deterding et al., 2011), which refers to integrating game methods into content and adding badge systems (the use of achievement markers to motivate continued involvement and development). However there is much debate about using this approach versus embedding learning in more authentic game settings (Tuloch, 2014) where the focus is on the core mechanics of the game and not just on the trivial aspects such as reward systems (Bogost, 2011).

A third perspective on the role of games and virtual worlds in education is organic: looking for and exploiting curricular topics inherent in popular games. Two obvious examples are the opportunity for improving reading that arises in almost every quest-based game, such as World of Warcraft, or the use of critical thinking or strategizing required in role-playing and real-time strategy games such as Portal, Civilization IV, Starcraft and Dragon Age, where players’ decisions affect game outcomes. The recent popularity of Minecraft in elementary and middle school classrooms (Duncan, 2011) has underscored the value of well-designed video games to not only engage, but also help children develop life skills such as creative thinking, and perseverance, in addition to visuospatial skills (as described in several articles in mainstream media, e.g. Smith, 2014).

Virtual worlds are sometimes viewed as a sub-genre of games and sometimes seen as just complex simulations with game elements, but the general principles of games hold. Virtual worlds are typically more focused on exploration than a specific game mechanic and they open up other possibilities for learning. Engaging narratives can further motivate students to explore the virtual world and situate themselves in a historical or fictional context that can include specific learning objectives. Virtual worlds support the placement of curricular concepts in the context of their natural or practical use, bringing concepts to practical life and allowing learners to interact and experiment with the changeable elements of the closed system or world. Unlike many purely playful virtual worlds that may offer a thin background of ‘lore,’ virtual worlds in the service of education make a point of foregrounding the narrative or unifying story element that creates the motive for investigative and exploratory engagement in the world.

Many popular research-based digital games for learning fall into this category, including River City, Quest Atlantis, and Whyville. Research on science learning in these multi-user immersive virtual environments (Barab, et al., 2010; Dede, 2009; Neulight et al., 2007) suggests that authentic designs and contextual narratives around science phenomena are not only engaging but also help learners acquire deep science inquiry skills and conceptual knowledge. Additionally, as Dede (2009) notes of River City, the digital immersion allows low-performing students especially to “build confidence in their academic abilities by stepping out of their real-world identity of poor performer academically, which shifts their frame of self reference to successful scientist in the virtual context.”

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