Computer-Based Games and Simulations in the Classroom

Introduction

Over the past several decades, there has been increasing pressure on the academic community to incorporate more computer-based games and simulations into standard curricula as a way to engage and motivate new generations of students, especially the generation commonly termed the “Net Generation,” or “Net Gen” for short. Members of the Net Gen are growing up with laptops, netbooks, smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles that have more processing power and graphics capabilities than most home computers did a mere ten to fifteen years ago.
With high-speed internet access through cable lines, satellites, and cell towers, these now-commonplace devices provide Net Gen learners with an almost constant stream of information—access to social and academic knowledge unparalleled by previous generations.

At the same time, academia has seen the rise of social constructivism and online collaborative learning theories, theories which appeal to both Net Gen teachers and learners and which are steadily gaining traction with administrations that until very recently have been mired in 19th- and 20th-century pedagogies. With the constant push for digital literacy in the classroom and in the boardroom, and with learners growing up consuming information at unprecedented rates, computer-based educational games and simulations are logical additions to the 21st-century classroom, but educators must be aware of the advantages and disadvantages associated with implementing these popular technologies within a standard curriculum.

Serious Games

In the simplest sense of the word, a game is a form of play that involves rules, goals, outcomes, and feedback. In 2008, Smith and Sawyer created a taxonomy of Serious Games—games that serve purposes other than mere play—that classified game function along a chart of seven uses, two of which were training and education, and seven users ranging from government to academia to private-sector industry. For the scope of this paper, we will focus on the intersection of the use as games for education with the user as academia, the function being learning.

As Klopfer, Osterweil, and Salen (2009) point out, “Learning Games are differentiated from Games for Training in that [learning games] target the acquisition of knowledge as its own end and foster habits of mind and understanding that are generally useful or useful within an academic context” (p. 21). Stated plainly, learning games attempt to teach an academic subject for the sake of the subject knowledge itself, whereas training games are meant to build proficiency conducting a specific task (e.g., operating a piece of machinery).

Computer-based learning games have been incorporated with varying degrees of success in the classroom over the past forty to fifty years, with the earliest versions being drill-and-practice behaviorist games. Later, in the 70s and 80s, cognitive learning games such as Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? began to appear. Now, after the technological advances of the past decade, academia is faced with almost unlimited choices in educational gaming, but there are advantages and disadvantages to using computer-based learning games in the classroom that teachers and administrators must weigh.

Advantages & Disadvantages

There are several major disadvantages that educators must overcome in order to successfully incorporate learning games into classroom activities. Wilson (2009) and Keesee (2011) both point to the inability of complex games to fit within the traditional classroom and semester timeframe. Furthermore, they both argue that it is difficult to track what is actually learned by each student due to either a lack of evaluation tools (Wilson) or variance in students’ in-game experiences (Keesee).

Both of these arguments naturally lead to questions about the ability of learning games to efficiently teach institution, state, and federal standards within the time generally allotted for a course or semester. Wilson goes on to point out that “the general unfamiliarity of educators with the modern gaming world” and “widespread negative attitudes toward games” further hinder the effective use of video games in education.

However, for the teacher willing to manage these difficulties, there are many important advantages associated with learning games in the classroom. Wilson tells us that video games are “complex problem-solving systems that develop logical thinking, decision making, and encourage a scientific approach to the unknown,” which are the very critical thinking skills that traditional classroom environments fail to foster in Net Gen learners.

Making History

One game that has gained popularity in many history, civics, and social studies classes across the United States over the past decade is Muzzy Lane’s Making History and its sequel Making History II, which combined state-of-the-art graphics and tactical turn-based gameplay with historically accurate events, nations, and cultures set during the World War II era.

  

Middle school, high school, or college students can play as any of a number of different countries and choose their country’s political course set against the backdrop of historical events. The original game, Making History, serves as a deep exploration of the history, politics, and cultures of Europe during the early to mid-1900s, allowing players to analyze and manipulate international policies, whereas the sequel expands to include the whole world. The nature of either game is cognitive, in that it situates learning within players’ preexisting knowledge of various countries, and constructivist, in that it facilitates the creation of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural knowledge through players’ in-game choices and interactions.

 

Making History and its sequel have all of the advantages of computer-based learning games listed earlier, but both games also have the disadvantages, the most notable being the lack of an assessment for academic purposes. And this lack of assessment will keep Making History and other games like it in the realm of supporting material on the sidelines of curricula until developers can provide in-game assessments showing quantifiable outcomes that meet state and federal standard requirements.

Computer-Based Simulators





B 777-200ER Flight Simulator

Let us turn now to computer-based leaning simulations. Whereas learning games in general may fall almost anywhere along Smith and Sawyer’s taxonomy of Serious Games, simulations tend to lie within the realm of training for proficiency in a specific skill or task. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning identifies three components of simulations as teaching tools: (1) “a data model or set of algorithms that can be manipulated by the learner and provides dynamic feedback based on those manipulations”; (2) “a role for the learner to adopt”; and (3) “an objective to achieve or set of tasks to complete using the data model” (Kelsey, 2009).  And the New Media Consortium (2014) describes digital simulations as “another method being used widely to reinforce conceptual applications in mock real world scenarios” (p. 43).

Essentially, computer-based learning simulations are digital representations of real-world environments in which learners interact with and manipulate said environment to gain proficiency in a skill or task. Flight simulators are a well-known example in which student-pilots fly virtual aircraft under various conditions in preparation for live flights. As with learning games, learning simulations have both advantages and disadvantages in the classroom. 

Advantages & Disadvantages




Among the many advantages of learning simulations is the safety factor. Simulations allow learners to interact with and manipulate dangerous environments and equipment in relative safety and with minimal stress. At the same time, simulations save money because learners can damage equipment in a virtual world at no cost to the school or training center, whereas similar mistakes on live equipment could cost millions of dollars per error.




Dismounted Close Combat Simulator

Furthermore, according to Kelsey (2009) simulations offer the “possibility for a multi-disciplinary or multi-concept experience where the challenge might be to try different prioritization strategies” and “a deliberate discovery approach [that] allows a learner to learn the model through experimentation with it.” For example, rich virtual worlds such as Harvard’s River City Project allow students to integrate a number of skills and disciplines as they overcome virtual problems through critical thinking, analysis, and experimentation. However, there are also several major disadvantages associated with learning simulations.




Virtual Reality Combat Simulator

The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning identifies the three most common problems: simulations are “more work to create than most other types of educational technology projects,” are “more difficult to evaluate than many other types of educational technology projects,” and are “inherently reductionist” (Kelsey, 2009). Simulations are more work because the level of detail and the complexity of options for manipulation within a realistic environment take time and money to develop, and no matter how much time or money is spent, simulations are reductionist because, as Kelsey (2009) points out, “you can’t model everything”—there is no way to get every physical detail or every possible event and outcome into a simulation. And finally, as was the case for learning games, quantifiable assessment is still an issue for learning simulations.

River City Project





River City Project

For the past fifteen years, the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University has been studying the use of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs)—a form of online digital simulation in which students can interact with a virtual environment, computer-generated characters, and each other through the use of a virtual character known as an avatar. With the help of grants from the National Science Foundation, Harvard developed the River City project. According to Metcalf, Clarke, and Dede (2009), River City was created to support problem-based learning in middle school science classrooms (p. 1).

Set in a historically accurate late-1800’s town named River City, students must assume the role of time-traveling 21st-century scientists who are tasked with curing a mysterious disease affecting the town. Students explore the virtual town independently, interviewing patients, examining symptoms, and using data collection tools to form hypotheses, but the student-scientists must come together as a team to share their findings through the use of in-world chat if they are to solve the town’s problem.

Though built on the concepts of problem-based learning, the collaborative online nature of the simulation—with teamwork being vital to success—grounds itself firmly in the theory of online collaborative learning as espoused by Harasim (2012).  However, although Metcalf et al. (2009) has concluded that the River City project “can be an effective platform for providing authentic inquiry in middle school science” (p.1), because the simulation is a succeed-fail scenario with no quantifiable assessment of what has been learned and what hasn’t, educators intending to implement the River City project in their classrooms are still faced with the problem of aligning the simulation’s outcomes with curriculum standards.

Conclusion

As we have seen, computer-based games and simulations can be an engaging tool to facilitate learning in 21st-century classrooms and welcome Net Gen students into existing discourse and knowledge communities, but educators must be aware of the advantages and disadvantage inherent in incorporating these technologies into existing curricula.

Video games and simulations may be more appealing than lectures and reading assignments to Net Gen students, and video games and simulations may, as Wilson (2009) suggests, “challenge [learners] to utilize higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills” useful in all areas of academic inquiry. But until developers can solve the assessment problem and ensure students are attaining measurable standards, many administrations will continue to view computer-based games and simulations as a novelty on the sidelines of approved curriculum, supplementary material to be skipped should time constraints require.

These problems invite further research in the coming decade, and so too the academic establishment will have to ask itself if, as we move further into the new millennium, academic standards themselves and the current method of testing those standards will have to change in order to suit the educational needs of Net Gen learners.

References

 

Harasim, L. (2012). Learning theory and online technology. New York, NY: Routledge.
 

Keesee, G. (2011). Educational games. Retrieved from http://teachinglearningresources.pbworks.com/w/page/35130965/Educational%20Games
 

Kelsey, R. (2009) An introduction to simulations for teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/enhanced/primers/simulation_primer.html
 

Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., & Salen, K. (2009). Moving learning games forward: Obstacles, opportunities, and openness. Retrieved from http://education.mit.edu/papers/MovingLearningGamesForward_EdArcade.pdf
 

Metcalf, S. J., Clarke, J., & Dede, C. (2009). Virtual worlds for education: River City and EcoMUVE. Retrieved from http://ecomuve.gse.harvard.edu/publications/MediaInTransition09VWfEfinal.pdf
 

Sawyer, B., & Smith, P. (2008). Serious games taxonomy. Retrieved from http://www.dmill.com/presentations/serious-games-taxonomy-2008.pdf
 

The New Media Consortium. (2014) The NMC horizon report: 2014 higher education edition. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2014-nmc-horizon-report-he-EN-SC.pdf
 

Wilson, L. (2009). Video games are useful educational tools. Media Violence. D. M. Haugen and S. 
            Musser (Eds.). Detroit: Greenhaven Press. Available from Opposing Viewpoints in Context
            database.