Nostalgia, we love it. Looking back at times gone by through rose tinted glasses and seeing how amazing and magical those times were.
I mean, do you remember 1995 when Sony brought out the first Playstation?
Or 2000 when they brought out the Playstation 2?
Well Sony does:
And they want you to as well.
Playing with our nostalgia is a little trick that’s starting to become more common in advertising, mostly aiming at us 90s kids because we’re so obsessed with generation Y.
Sony’s Playstation 4 adverts plays on this, it’s clearly aimed at the ’90s kid’, because we’re the ones with the memories, even though we would have been too young to play a Playstation when it first came out.
Adding an emotional level it shows how ‘Daniel’ (Hey look, my name) grew up with the Playstation, but not just that; also how the Playstation has grown up with him. It adds some sentiment to the brand and brings up the happy memories of all the products; but the advert is over half-way through before the Playstation 3 is shown, why is that? The popular ‘nostalgic’ memories it’s aiming for are associated with the Playstation 1 and 2, when they dominated the market and became so rooted in many childhood and teenage years that Nostalgia will definitely influence our impression of the brand, the Playstation 3 on the other hand was less dominant in the market, and most people still have one. The Playstation 3 lacks nostalgia value.
From the evolution to the Domino’s box, to the game and music posters on the wall the advert plays on our happy memories and reminds us constantly that playstation was there, the brand was there and the product was in our home. Sony remembers what it was like when we were growing up, and Playstation has been there every step of the way; they’ve been “For the players since 1995”, and they’ll be “for the players” in times to come by what the advert says.
So surely we can trust them to bring back those feeling of fun with the Playstation 4, right?
I’m a small lover of Nostalgia and games, and while my next blog will focus on Nostalgia once again it won’t be focusing on a gaming system, rather a product few people use anymore.
But hey, I’ll explain the excuses after the videos.
Edutainment:
Games and Society:
Yeah, my laptop has issues and loves to crash when I do things to do with videos. In the last 24 hours it crashed 5 times, 4 while trying to save my editing (meaning I lost all of it) and once while trying to upload them.
This was happening when I first worked on the videos and otherwise they would have been online about 2 weeks ago as I originally intended; but a temper tantrum and decision to let myself relax before I threw my poor lappy out a window meant they’ve only just got on.
Sorry about that.
Hope you enjoy and my lisping away as I speak isn’t too distracting, have a great day.
Here we are not at the end but in fact passed it: we got what was needed, gathered the experience and now the elite 4 no longer stands in our way… My word, that pokemon analogy fit in much better than I expected, and it continues to fit, but I’ll come back to it later.
This module has easily been one of my favourite modules and I see it as because of the freedom we’ve been granted. I’ve seen it not as an educational experience but simply an experience, rather than me now think that everything I learnt will be forgotten in a few months, I feel I’ll be able to talk about the potential of video games in the educational system for years to come.
And despite me having done this work, and despite me having done the 3 introduction blogs, 4 main blogs, synthesis blog and comments, like in pokemon (told you I’d come back to it); completing the module doesn’t mean I know everything, in the same way that defeating the elite four doesn’t mean you’ve caught them all.
I can look back now and argue the current education system is broken, but I’d rather say that it’s unrefined and dated in this modern world, it’s not broken because it used to be the best system available, however is has not updated with the times. I’ve spoke about video games and how they can work as educational tools; but it’s not just my own work and area that I’ve learnt about, I’ve actually learnt about a variety of areas including metacognition, physical activity and feedback with their influence on education, and I can still talk about them despite my supposed use for such knowledge ending when I submitted my blogs/comments
The blogs for this module could easily be used as light reading for someone wanting to go into education, or a teacher trying to find new approaches to educate their students, and I’ve had a fantastic time doing it. I just find it unfortunate that we had so many things to say against the current education system rather than praise it, but as stated earlier the system used to be the best available, it just isn’t so any more.
In my very first blog post I said “why not enjoy it?” and I have thoroughly enjoyed this module, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed my entertainment as well, because that’s what it’s felt like. I associate education as something I don’t really want to do, something boring that I need to go through; but this module has been different, I’ve wanted to work in the same way I’ve wanted to play a game and it’s been great, it’s been an entertaining experience rather than one I’ve felt bored of right the way through.
While I’ll admit I was daunted at the beginning of the module feeling like so much control and power was beyond my abilities I feel as though I’d strived in it, it’s been nice if a little scary at times.
[Edit:] Basically, I feel like this:
Only like, ‘the module is complete’ rather than ‘the world is saved’ and a few other minor tweaks; but why not use a video game based song to round off my blog that has focused on how video games can be used in education? [/Edit]
Anyway, that’s all from me until my speeches are uploaded next week.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading my blog these past few months and hey, maybe lets do it again some time.
So here we are at the Synthesis, and what a ride we’ve had. If this is your first time reading my blog then it’s a good place to start, I’m in the fortunate position that at the start of the module I already knew what I was aiming to talk about so rather than 4 blogs to look back on I have a wonderful 7.
And now I get to answer my burning question, can video games really be used as an effective educational tool?
Well they have a greater influence on us when related to such things as films (Lin, 2013) as a result of our direct control which may be the argument for why they provide experiential learning teaching people to drive (Jose & Mayora, 2008) without the need in them being on the road. The issue with this is that it’s not only the games designed to teach us with experiential learning that have an effect, street racing video games offer the same type of learning but what we learn from them is not what we would really want people to learn (Vingilis et al, 2013).
Part of the reason for this greater experiential learning is the result of an improved ‘immersion’ which if you missed my blog on the topic is defined as:
“A Zen-like state where your hands just seem to know what to do, and your mind just seems to carry on with the story”
(Brown & Cairns, 2004)
A concept very similar to ‘flow’:
“…a state of total absorption in the task at hand.”
(Schmidt, 2010)
Why is this relevant? Well ‘flow’ is an educational concept shown to improve learning in schools (Esteban-Millat et al, 2014) as it allows student focus on the task at hand. And because video games already show great ‘immersion’ and the concepts are the same, it’s easy to argue that the two could be intertwined to create a better educational experience.
The medium isn’t without its faults however as there is a distinct difference between so called ‘serious’ games and ‘traditional’ games. For a good example ‘serious’ games have been shown to aid in sex education (Arnab et al, 2013) where as ‘traditional’ ones have been shown as acting detrimental to sexual equality (Fox & Tang, 2013). The issue here is that the games are very good teachers, regardless of whether they are trying to teach or not because of the ‘immersion’ and ‘flow’ similarity.
Looking at a lighter side however it’s not just in the game experience that games teach, they promote tangential learning which is argued as the best kind of learning (Armstrong, 1979). While teacher generate interest in subjects (Rotgan & Schmidt, 2011), games can do it oh so much better because we get a genuine interest in the area because we love the game so much; Animal Crossing, Ryse: Son of Rome and games like this promote the player to actually learn about the subjects they address, and this improves our learning experience (Schiefele, 1991).
This still doesn’t mean they’re perfect though, as the misrepresentation of history in Ryse: Son of Rome may result in learning of false information (Sar, 2012) and the same can be said of most subject matters.
Current educational games seem to be far from perfect, I used the example Math-Man earlier in my blogs because it broke the ‘flow’ while playing and ruined the teaching ability (Pace, 2004) because the sense of control was lost (Murray, Fox & Pettifer, 2007). However some games have been shown that they can improve knowledge of what has already been learnt (Barzilai & Blau, 2014) but to do so the game must not interfere with the flow of the player.
With everything I’ve covered there is a strong argument for the use of video games in the educational system, they provide an entertaining educational tool which can open up sensitive subjects and promote individual learning among students. However they are almost too effective, before they can be taken as a proper educational tool it’s my personal believe that the current game industry should be encouraged to take note of what they are capable of teaching and act accordingly with this.
The games that are released for entertainment could work to the detriment of those trying to educate incredibly easy and mixed messages could be relayed, but as a tool, as a method the video games certainly have a place in the education system. They can provide experience in applying the knowledge learnt and they can encourage people to research subjects themselves, however, the educational system should first look into what the entertainment industry has already learnt about engaging players and creating better ‘immersion’. That knowledge can be used to improve the educational games, and avoid games such as Math Man which don’t really work to teach and instead serve to irritate the player.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading this, and if you want to see any of the points raised in more detail feel free to read through the relevant posts in my blog.
Have a fantastic day.
– – – – – References – – – – –
Armstrong, J. (1979). The natural learning project. Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation, 1, 5-12.
Arnab, S., Brown, K., Clarke, S., Dunwell, I., Lim, T., Suttie, N., … & De Freitas, S. (2013). The development approach of a pedagogically-driven serious game to support Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) within a classroom setting. Computers & Education, 69, 15-30.
Barzilai, S., & Blau, I. (2014). Scaffolding game-based learning: Impact on learning achievements, perceived learning, and game experiences. Computers & Education, 70, 65-79.
Brown, E., & Cairns, P. (2004). A grounded investigation of game immersion. In CHI’04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1297-1300). ACM.
Esteban-Millat, I., Martínez-López, F. J., Huertas-García, R., Meseguer, A., & Rodríguez-Ardura, I. (2013). Modelling students’ flow experiences in an online learning environment. Computers & Education.
Fox, J., & Tang, W. Y. (2013). Sexism in online video games: The role of conformity to masculine norms and social dominance orientation. Computers in Human Behavior.
Jose, M., & Mayora, P. (2008). A human factor based approach for effective use of driving simulators and e-learning tools for driver training and education. In European conference on human centered design for intelligent transportation systems.
Lin, J. H. (2013). Do video games exert stronger effects on aggression than film? The role of media interactivity and identification on the association of violent content and aggressive outcomes. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 535-543.
Murray, C. D., Fox, J., & Pettifer, S. (2007). Absorption, dissociation, locus of control and presence in virtual reality. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(3), 1347-1354.
Pace, S. (2004). A grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users.International journal of human-computer studies, 60(3), 327-363.
Rotgans, J. I., & Schmidt, H. G. (2011). The role of teachers in facilitating situational interest in an active-learning classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1), 37-42.
Şar, E. (2012). The Role of History-Themed Non-Educational Computer Games on Primary School Children’(at Grades 6th, 7th and 8th) Perceptions of History.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 55, 776-781.
Schiefele, U. (1991). Interest, learning, and motivation. Educational psychologist, 26(3-4), 299-323.
Schmidt, J. (2010). Flow in Education. International Encyclopedia of Education, 3, 605-611.
Vingilis, E., Seeley, J., Wiesenthal, D. L., Wickens, C. M., Fischer, P., & Mann, R. E. (2013). Street racing video games and risk-taking driving: An Internet survey of automobile enthusiasts. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 50, 1-7.
So now I’ve looked at how educational games can work, and I’ve looked at how this can be exploited negatively, and I’ve also given some thought into a bad example of an educational game.
However I’ve not focused at any point on displaying successful use of games in education, I’ve mentioned it; I’ve talked about how it could work, but never focused on when it’s working. So here I go, after 2 weeks of where it can go wrong, here’s the light at the end of the tunnel:
Although I’ve focused on video games, most games can be useful for the educational system; from bridging the gap between theory and practice (Routarinne & Ylirisku, 2012) to encouraging discussion in otherwise uncomfortable subjects such as relationship and sex education (Arnab et al, 2013). The latter intrigued me especially, as it was using video games and video games are usually seen as childish and as I’ve mentioned can cause negative sexual stereotypes yet this ‘childish’ media was used to inspire a more adult approach to the subject.
One of the joys of a game is that it doesn’t have to be set, a game if done right can grow and adapt to your skill level allowing you a better learning experience (Sampayo-Vargas et al, 2013) and even a way to enhance what has already been learnt (Barzilai & Blau, 2014), though providing this scaffolding did result in a lower perceived learning from the students.
Even virtual reality can improve the learning experience of students (Merchant et al, 2014) so long as they are not over moderated, and the moderation isn’t the fault of the game itself but rather the teacher’s methods.
These new games are increasingly being called ‘serious’ games to differentiate them from the supposed ‘childish’ ones we play for entertainment, but even so there’s not much in a name and the games are promoting human capitol (Earp et al, 2014) and self-control (Moroianu & Dumitru, 2013). Such developments and the advantages for use of these ‘serious’ games for education in many areas has lead to the development of SIMULATE (Annetta et al, 2013) and iThink (Fernandes et al, 2012) to use these and the concepts of how they work to better the educational system.
Now these games aren’t perfect, they need to take into account content and experience to work properly (De Grove, Bourgonjon & Looy, 2012) but they promote a better attitude from the students towards their education (Costu, Aydin & Filiz, 2009), and why shouldn’t we enjoy our education?
Looking through the evidence I can see why there is this distinction between ‘serious’ games and your standard video games but it’s not something that makes sense to me. I had a conversation with someone who was deeply interested in the new ‘Ryse: Son of Rome’ game that’s coming out; and he’s not getting it because he expected to play a Centurion in Ancient Rome, playing the actual battles and fights the way they would have happened; and the fact it’s the story of an invented character actually turned him away from it because it wouldn’t be accurate in it’s portrayal.
How strange is that? Games are actually starting to lose interest because people want them to show things accurately, they want something they can learn from rather than something invented. The people want to learn from their games!
Games can educate, and there are people; even those who play games casually, who actually want their games to educate.
Have a think and see if there are any games you can think of that you would have felt better about if they were portraying something realistically, how would you feel knowing that while you played it, do you think you’d feel better about playing it? We already know you’d learn from it and your idea might help the development of a ‘games in education’ strategy at some point in the near future.
– – – – – References – – – – –
Annetta, L., Lamb, R., Minogue, J., Folta, E., Holmes, S., Vallett, D., & Cheng, R. (2013). Safe Science Classrooms: Teacher Training Through Serious Educational Games. Information Sciences.
Arnab, S., Brown, K., Clarke, S., Dunwell, I., Lim, T., Suttie, N., … & De Freitas, S. (2013). The development approach of a pedagogically-driven serious game to support Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) within a classroom setting. Computers & Education, 69, 15-30.
Barzilai, S., & Blau, I. (2014). Scaffolding game-based learning: Impact on learning achievements, perceived learning, and game experiences. Computers & Education, 70, 65-79.
Coştu, S., Aydın, S., & Filiz, M. (2009). Students’ conceptions about browser-game-based learning in mathematics education: TTNetvitamin case. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(1), 1848-1852.
De Grove, F., Bourgonjon, J., & Van Looy, J. (2012). Digital games in the classroom? A contextual approach to teachers’ adoption intention of digital games in formal education. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), 2023-2033.
Earp, J., Ott, M., Popescu, M., Romero, M., & Usart, M. (2013). Supporting Human Capital development with Serious Games: An analysis of three experiences. Computers in Human Behavior.
Fernandes, J., Duarte, D., Ribeiro, C., Farinha, C., Pereira, J. M., & Silva, M. M. D. (2012). iThink: A Game-Based Approach Towards Improving Collaboration and Participation in Requirement Elicitation. Procedia Computer Science, 15, 66-77.
Merchant, Z., Goetz, E. T., Cifuentes, L., Keeney-Kennicutt, W., & Davis, T. J. (2014). Effectiveness of virtual reality-based instruction on students’ learning outcomes in K-12 and higher education: A meta-analysis. Computers & Education, 70, 29-40.
Moroianu, M., & Dumitru, M. (2013). The Influence of the Sporting Game (Basketball) on the General Education of Children Aged 9–11. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 89, 88-93.
Routarinne, S., & Ylirisku, S. (2012). Video Card Game as a Learning Design for Teacher Education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 45, 370-380.
Sampayo-Vargas, S., Cope, C. J., He, Z., & Byrne, G. J. (2013). The effectiveness of adaptive difficulty adjustments on students’ motivation and learning in an educational computer game. Computers & Education, 69, 452-462.
Okay, so last week I said that the debate as to whether the game industry should take responsibility might be a focus in my blog, and this week; I’m’m going to talk about why the education business should go to them.
People who attended my talk on the 14th will recognise the examples I’m going to use here, but in the 10 minutes I lacked the time to fully explain them while allowing them to be shown properly, so here I’m going to use them again, and go into some more detail:
Fun fact; Originally it was going to be Puck-Man, but risk of vandals caused a change of heart
So Pac-Man is supposedly popular because it plays well on our ‘hunter’ and ‘prey’ psychology (Yannakakis & Hallam, 2004a) allowing us to play both parts while providing interactive opponents (Yannakakis & Hallam, 2004b) which make the game more interesting. It manipulates us into zoomorphizing the simple shapes into something we see as relatable (Dorin, 2004) and difficulty of the game does not grow drastically becoming overly difficult all of a sudden, enhancing our experience (Aponte, Levieux & Natkin, 2011) and meaning our immersion is not broken (Qin, Rau & Salvendy, 2010).
So now we know that Pac-Man is amazing, and we know some of the reasons why, but it doesn’t teach us anything now does it?
With such a successful and simple game it’s easy to see why education games have been based on it, enter Math Man:
Our hero and Saviour, or is it?
The concept is simple, take a game that works, is immersive and enjoyable, and add Maths to it in order to teach children Maths, what could possibly go wrong right?
Well it lost the immersion. Math Man asks too much of the player at once, causing a loss in sense of control and doesn’t merge action and awareness by removing you from the experience, damaging the sense of flow (Pace, 2004), control being especially important (Murray, Fox & Pettifer, 2007).
The issue with Math Man is that it lost what was good about Pac-Man, yes you’re in a maze, but you have freedom of choice, when you’re the hunter, you can hunt whoever you like, or you can simply avoid them all together, you have control over the experience.
Math Man forces you not only to attack the ghosts, but in a particular order, and you’re removed from the experience while you solve the equation which results in a very stop-start feeling of play, disengaging you from the game and breaking our flow (Douglas & Hargadon, 2010).
And my point: It’s all well and good blaming the Video game industry for not teaching our children; but seriously, why should they? They’re a business and no one is offering them anything to do so.
The British Army will pay $35,000 for the licence to use what is essentially ARMA2 to teach their soldiers; that would be about 875 new copies of the game; and guess what? Bethesda (the developer) even modified the game to their needs because of it, they were given a reason and a game developer created a special version of the product to fill that gap.
Why can’t the Education system attempt the same? Rather than try to make games, or modify games themselves, why not make an offer to a game company saying if they modify their game to teach this, the Entertainment system will buy it off them.
For example if Skybox labs (Newer Age of Empires developer) was approached and asked to make a version of Age of Empires which more accurately showed the expansion of the Roman Empire; they already know what they are doing;
Historians could provide the plot and the story and the developers could just create the game based around it, co-operation which would generate a reason for the game industry to help the Education industry, and give the Education industry an educational game that would actually work.
Win-win!
And there we have it, Pac-Man is ace and works, Math Man is not. We know the Video Game industry is willing to create the supply if there is a demand; it’s just a matter of making the right approach.
Maybe in the future sometime we’ll see a Battlefield or Call of Duty based around accurate portrayals of historical battles, wouldn’t that be sweet?
– – – – – References – – – – –
Aponte, M. V., Levieux, G., & Natkin, S. (2011). Measuring the level of difficulty in single player video games. Entertainment Computing, 2(4), 205-213.
Douglas, J. Y., & Hargadon, A. (2001). The pleasures of immersion and engagement: Schemas, scripts and the fifth business. Digital Creativity, 12(3), 153-166.
Dorin, A. (2004). Building artificial life for play. Artificial life, 10(1), 99-112.
Murray, C. D., Fox, J., & Pettifer, S. (2007). Absorption, dissociation, locus of control and presence in virtual reality. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(3), 1347-1354.
Pace, S. (2004). A grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users.International journal of human-computer studies, 60(3), 327-363.
Qin, H., Rau, P. L. P., & Salvendy, G. (2010). Effects of different scenarios of game difficulty on player immersion. Interacting with Computers, 22(3), 230-239.
Yannakakis, G. N., & Hallam, J. (2004). Evolving opponents for interesting interactive computer games. From animals to animats, 8, 499-508.
Yannakakis, G. N., & Hallam, J. (2004). Interactive opponents generate interesting games. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Games: Artificial Intelligence, Design and Education (pp. 240-247).
Today I’m going to focus less on the techniques and abilities of games to teach, and rather what they are already teaching… Which, is a bit of a combo breaker because it’s negative rather than positive. Previously I’ve twisted some negative lessons to display how they can be used to create more positive outcomes, but it gets boring (and displays heavy bias) to only show one side of the fight, so here’s the villain so to speak.
Ignoring all the above as introduction, welcome to a blog about what video games are already teaching us;
Prot et al (2012) published a paper called ‘Video games: good, bad or other?’ and reached the conclusion that they were a mix of the 3, while they did have some positive aspects such as the well known visuospatial skills, they also taught that aggression was ok and did nothing useful for quite a bit of the time they were played.
This violence in video games has been looked at a lot, and it’s been proven that by playing games we are taught to think less of serious crimes, mainly the ones we commit in the games (Lee, Peng and Klein, 2010). Possibly more worrying than this however is that they teach us to take more risk-taking behaviour, the same principles I spoke of in ‘earning the exp’ work with all games if we immerse ourselves in them, meaning the unrealistic physics of the video game worlds teach players into thinking some impossibilities may well be possible, increasing self-harming actions (Teismann et al, 2013).
Just think here for a second, how did you learn the limits of what your body is capable of?
You weren’t born knowing how far you could jump, or fall, or how durable your body was. You learnt it through experience.
While it may be an odd thing to claim as education, just knowing physical limits is something learnt and I’m certain some of those limits were learnt through your school days in Physical Education or gym class.
Now imagine you played games and saw a ‘realistic’ game like GTA all the time…
But media has been around for centuries, can video games really be so much more effective at teaching than films or a good book?
Arguably, yes (Lin, 2013). Because you have direct control your brain interprets the character as you and thus with some behaviours it teaches you that the character IS you, and so you can do whatever the character does. In a film you merely watch someone else do it.
So what else? Aggression is always beaten on as something we learn from video games so can I focus on something new? Something current and to the heart of the modern world?
Ever seen Lara Croft? Miranda Lawson? The entire female cast of the Dead or Alive series?
That’s teaching some valuable citizenship right there, it’s teaching children and those who play some horrid expectations of women, how they should look, act and so on (Fox & Tang, 2013). Aside from the occasional character it’s hard to find a truely realistic female main character, it’s the woman’s job to be kidnapped (Mario, Zelda, etc.) or be a sex object (far too many to mention. And this is in a time that gender equality is supposed to be getting taught in schools and by all forms of media.
Driving games do the same, I’ve mentioned driving simulators but just because it’s not a simulator doesn’t mean it doesn’t teach, a simulator just teaches the laws of physics correctly. Street Racing is becoming slightly more of an issue due to young gamers learning how to do it in games and thinking they’re amazing at the sport (Vingilis et al, 2013). If their games had been simulations with real consequences maybe this would not be taught, but it’s not, so they’re taught not only how to do it (or so they think) but that it’s a-ok because it’s so easy.
Even basic history isn’t safe (Sar, 2012). Untrue portrayals of history in entertainment video games teach just in the same way as realistic portrayals. Some of you may have seen my comment last week about how I thought Dimitri raised the soviet flag at the reichstag because of call of duty. It’s not just citizenship and common sense that the current video game format is teaching wrong but also history, because decisions are made to value the entertainment value over the factual one.
This may look like a rant and not much about education, but I’m hoping the text in quotations helps explain my point. We live in a world where we learn everything from our own limits to the laws of our society to the history of our world and video games are currently teaching all these lessons wrong.
I’ve said they are effective teachers but that doesn’t make them ‘good’ teachers, it makes them dangerous ones. Each misrepresented ‘fact’ in a game could be taken into the mind of any player; as they have high flow, are gaining experience in the field and being reinforced for their actions. It could easily overwrite the lessons they should be learning.
So here we go with a question, what do you think? I’ve basically wrote a blog saying video game designers are being irresponsible not recognising the educational potential of video games by mis-representing everything from the laws of physics to the laws of the land and do you think I’m right in saying it?
Should the Video game industry take education, and their capability for it more serious and make an effort to avoid teaching none-facts to their players, or is it not their responsibility because they’re an entertainment industry, not a nanny?
This debate may become a bit of a focus for by blog now, analysing the pros and cons of video games in educations and hopefully discussing where the line should be drawn between education and entertainment in a media which acts as a natural teacher.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the blog and have a fantastic day.
– – – – – References – – – – –
Fox, J., & Tang, W. Y. (2013). Sexism in online video games: The role of conformity to masculine norms and social dominance orientation. Computers in Human Behavior.
Lee, K. M., Peng, W., & Klein, J. (2010). Will the experience of playing a violent role in a video game influence people’s judgments of violent crimes?.Computers in human Behavior, 26(5), 1019-1023.
Lin, J. H. (2013). Do video games exert stronger effects on aggression than film? The role of media interactivity and identification on the association of violent content and aggressive outcomes. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 535-543.
Prot, S., McDonald, K. A., Anderson, C. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2012). Video Games:: Good, Bad, or Other?. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 59(3), 647-658.
Şar, E. (2012). The Role of History-Themed Non-Educational Computer Games on Primary School Children’(at Grades 6th, 7th and 8th) Perceptions of History.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 55, 776-781.
Teismann, T., Förtsch, E. M. A., Baumgart, P., Het, S., & Michalak, J. (2013). Influence of violent video gaming on determinants of the acquired capability for suicide. Psychiatry Research.
Vingilis, E., Seeley, J., Wiesenthal, D. L., Wickens, C. M., Fischer, P., & Mann, R. E. (2013). Street racing video games and risk-taking driving: An Internet survey of automobile enthusiasts. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 50, 1-7.
So today I’m going to have a talk about ‘immersion’, its relationship and similarity to ‘flow’, and therefore it’s usefulness for education.
Now if ‘flow’ sounds like something familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve already read about it in James’ blog , which amazingly is where I discovered the concept of ‘flow’ and where I’m claiming my inspiration for this blog.
Now to start, and get it out the way I’ll give some definitions of ‘immersion’:
“A Zen-like state where your hands just seem to know what to do, and your mind just seems to carry on with the story.“
(Brown & Cairns, 2004)
“When you stop thinking about the fact that you’re playing a computer game and you’re just in a computer.”
(Brown & Cairns, 2004)
So in the simplest of terms, it’s when you feel like you’re a part the game you’re playing, like you’re not in the real world anymore. You know, like a less literal version of what happens at the end of this scene:
And now a definition of flow:
“…a state of total absorption in the task at hand.”
(Schmidt, 2010)
I’d try and put that into my own words, but all I can think of is that it’s like when you feel like you’re a part of what you’re doing, like you’re not in the real world anymore. Sort of like a less literal version of what happens in this scene:
Now ‘immersion’ is argued to work better when the player feels like they’re challenged, but failure is not unfairly out of their control (Qin, Rau & Salvendy, 2010) where as ‘flow’ works much better when the user is challenged, but still maintains a strong feeling of control over the experience (Kiili et al, 2012).
The major difference is that ‘flow’ is mostly looked at by Educational psychologists, whereas ‘immersion’ is mostly looked at by Entertainment psychologists, specifically those working on video games.
So now I’m hoping you understand that I think them pretty much one-and-the-same, so from here I’m going to refer to the two as one in the same, and discussed how it could be used for education.
Now ‘flow’ has already been recommended to be used in schools as it created a positive environment and improves student learning (Esteban-Millat et al, 2014) and other research has shown that higher educated children have more of a fondness to social, multiplayer games (Bijvank, Konijin & Bushman, 2012). Not only this but it’s been shown that by playing against human controlled opponents, ‘immersion’ is higher than games played against computer controlled opponents (Weibel et al, 2008) regardless as to whether these opponents are online, or offline (Cairns et al, 2013).
So, why not create a game where a class is with each other, to attain a particular outcome? Well this has been tried in Amsterdam already, showing better knowledge in the students who were more immersed in the game, and competed more with their peers (Admiraal et al, 2011).
James can explain the game if you’d like more detail on it…
How is this useful? Well we’ve realised that flow and immersion are in essence, the same thing aside from research aim (‘Flow’ for Educational, ‘Immersion’ for Entertainment) and so the research for them can probably be combined (‘Flowmersion’ for Edutainment?). Using this immersive multiplayer games with challenging knowledge/skill based goals for a class can be developed, and inter-class competition can be used as a factor to improve the learning of said class.
As a hypothetical example; say you split a class of 30 into 10 teams of 3 and they have to play through the game solving challenges relating to their subjects.
Suppose they’re playing in a virtual town; and they talk to the virtual farmer who claims he has 5 cows that produce 8 bottles of milk each, but he’s only got 4 bottles.
The students have to collect and deliver the correct amount of bottles to the farmer to please him; but they have to work out how many bottles that is and where to get them. With other tasks from other citizens the winning team would be the first team to please all the town’s citizens.
On the farmer challenge alone they would first need to show multiplication to discover how many bottles are needed, and then they would have to find the shop and buy them, again using multiplication to calculate the price of all the bottles. Additional challenges could also come, such as what if the group doesn’t have enough money to buy the bottles? What would they do then?
Now admittedly this is a basic example, but it’s a basic example of how the system could be used at a primary school level to teach multiplication. It incorporates some degree of difficulty, interactivity, and a small amount of competition between teams and co-operation within teams; and importantly for me it handles a subject I had great difficulty with (I was horrid with basic multiplication as a child, complex equations and algebra; easy. 7×8? Didn’t have a clue).
So there we go, an explanation as to why I think the Educational concept of ‘Flow’ and Entertainment concept of ‘Immersion’ should be combined to create an Edutainment concept of ‘Flowmersion’ and a basic idea of how it could be applied to primary school level arithmetic.
Along with some more Tron references; because I really like Tron, and some horrid word creation; because I really like feeling clever, and I really hope it makes my blogs a little more entertaining for you guys as well.
– – – – – References – – – –
Admiraal, W., Huizenga, J., Akkerman, S., & Dam, G. T. (2011). The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning. Computers in Human Behavior,27(3), 1185-1194.
Brown, E., & Cairns, P. (2004). A grounded investigation of game immersion. In CHI’04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1297-1300). ACM.
Cairns, P., Cox, A. L., Day, M., Martin, H., & Perryman, T. (2013). Who but not where: The effect of social play on immersion in digital games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
Esteban-Millat, I., Martínez-López, F. J., Huertas-García, R., Meseguer, A., & Rodríguez-Ardura, I. (2013). Modelling students’ flow experiences in an online learning environment. Computers & Education.
Jennett, C., Cox, A. L., Cairns, P., Dhoparee, S., Epps, A., Tijs, T., & Walton, A. (2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games.International journal of human-computer studies, 66(9), 641-661.
Kiili, K., de Freitas, S., Arnab, S., & Lainema, T. (2012). The Design Principles for Flow Experience in Educational Games. Procedia Computer Science, 15, 78-91.
Nije Bijvank, M., Konijn, E. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2012). “We don’t need no education”: Video game preferences, video game motivations, and aggressiveness among adolescent boys of different educational ability levels.Journal of adolescence, 35(1), 153-162.
Qin, H., Rau, P. L. P., & Salvendy, G. (2010). Effects of different scenarios of game difficulty on player immersion. Interacting with Computers, 22(3), 230-239.
Schmidt, J. (2010). Flow in Education. International Encyclopedia of Education, 3, 605-611.
Weibel, D., Wissmath, B., Habegger, S., Steiner, Y., & Groner, R. (2008). Playing online games against computer-vs. human-controlled opponents: Effects on presence, flow, and enjoyment. Computers in Human Behavior,24(5), 2274-2291.
Now games have been used in education since the stone age (Smith, 2010) and so far I’ve talked about tangential learning, and I’ve talked about some natural teaching from video games with rewards encouraging types of behaviour… But neither of these are very specific are they? I mean, what if you wanted to teach something like navigation skills, or driving, or actual (military) combat?
Trying to make a clever tron reference, props to anyone who gets it.
Well it’s been shown that (particularly with the military part) games are useful for this (Langkamer Ratwani, Orvis, & Knerr 2010). Providing a feeling of preparedness for situations, better focus and felt they could better work as a team while they were in operation. These techniques however have been recommended as not the only part of the training, providing cognitive improvement and experience, but lacking the physicality of the combat (Roman & Brown, 2008).
But not everyone wants to be a soldier, so what about in more general terms, can a game say, teach you to drive properly? Well, yes… If the setup has been done correctly, in fact it’s being argued as a great way to help teach the disabled and the elderly to drive properly on the road without the possible issues that may be caused with using active road experience (Jose & Mayora, 2008). In fact, with the aid of a trained instructor they’ve been argued as a way to help the elderly be able to stay on the road for longer periods of time while cutting down on the dangers they may pose to themselves and others (Association for Psychological Science, 2011).
Driving simulator examples. Image 1 is a lorry simulator admittedly, but it still counts.
Again though, this isn’t a skill everyone learns. It’s one a lot of people learn, but not everyone… So how about games teaching basic Maths and Language? I know there are games that aim for this, but they’re quite boring, can a fun game help teach these basic skills to younger children then?
By now you’ve guess I’m only asking questions to say yes, Antarctik (maybe not the best known game), has been argues to aid in basic multiplication and percentage skills and Runescape (a much better known one), for language practicing (Duplàa & Shirmohammadi, 2013). Due to the nature of games with basic reading (Go, Stop, Load etc.), basic maths (most games include some addition and subtraction at least), more advanced language skills (answering questions, following directions etc.) and some social interaction aspect (online multiplayer… Ish) all these things can be learnt from simply playing and gaining the experience with the skills (Griffiths, 2002).
Now, I won’t say games are perfect, out of any medium games are the most player orientated, and because every player will have a separate experience not everyone will learn the same skills to the same levels (Kingsley, 2012). But what I am saying is that they can be used, the first 3 screenshots were from Arma 3, a military simulator of which a variant is what was used in the research by Langkamer Ratwani, Orvis, Knerr, Roman & Brown. The retail version is seen as one of the most difficult games to master, but it’s because mastering it requires a lot of real-world skills (and an amazing knowledge of your keyboard).
And there we have it, experience with skills in a game can reflect real life, and even the most basic of games can offer at least some basic skills to the player. Perhaps this isn’t useful at a later stage, but in early (primary school) education it definitely offers a way to introduce those basic maths and language skills in a fun way.
Duplàa, E., & Shirmohammadi, S. (2013, June). Theory of activity and fun factor in serious games: The case of social game about financial literacy for the classroom. In World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (Vol. 2013, No. 1, pp. 982-989).
Griffiths, M. (2002). The educational benefits of videogames. Education and Health, 20(3), 47-51.
Jose, M., & Mayora, P. (2008). A human factor based approach for effective use of driving simulators and e-learning tools for driver training and education. InEuropean conference on human centered design for intelligent transportation systems.
Kingsley, K. (2012). Teaching 21st Century Skills through Educational Video Games. In Global Learn (Vol. 2012, No. 1, pp. 176-181).
Langkamer Ratwani, K., Orvis, K. L., & Knerr, B. W. (2010). Game-Based Training Effectiveness Evaluation in an Operational Setting (No. 1500). APTIMA INC WOBURN MA.
Roman, P. A., & Brown, D. (2008). Games–Just how serious are they?. In The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC) (Vol. 2008, No. 1). National Training Systems Association.
Smith, R. (2010). The long history of gaming in military training. Simulation & Gaming, 41(1), 6-19.
Alrighty, as I have been doing here’s a blog post that isn’t for work, however this should be the last one on here (Hooray?).
In order for me to be able to separate my want to just babble about my ideas in psychology and my actual work (As I need to create another work blog for Emotion and Motivation), I’ve created another blog (What, more? Extra). On this one you’ll find the sub-post things I have been doing that show why I’m making the blog posts I am, none of it is actually my marked work (at least I’m hoping it won’t be looked at for marked work); but also little bits to do with my talks, or even work related content I like but just don’t want in my work.
What, more Psych? 
