Slaying More Myths About Videogames

Last month I wrote about fellow Texan and Education Business Blog guru Lee Wilson’s excellent article on myths about educational videogames that ran in Technology & Learning. This month, Part 2 was published, and Wilson explores three more commonly held misconceptions on the topic.

First, Wilson addresses one of the strongest criticisms against educational games, mainly that instructional elements are akin to pearls on swine. In other words, an innately fun medium is being bent and stretched to accommodate educational purposes. Wilson allows that people like Justin Peters are partly right: good game design is needed, regardless of the serious or recreational nature of the game. But, there are many, many successful educational games that are both fun and … educational. He points out Whyville at University of Texas as a prime example. Instant gratification is not the point for complex videogames. Wilson points to several games that require hours of dedication in order to achieve goals. He notes that Steven Johnson said in his book Everything Bad Is Good for You, that “… compared to most forms of popular entertainment, games turn out to be all about delayed gratification—sometimes so long delayed that you wonder if the gratification is ever going to show.” The Civilization series and World of Warcraft are brought in to buttress this point.

Next, Wilson tackles the notion that games are good enough to teach kids on their own, without help from the teacher. This myth kind of goes to the opposite extreme of other myths that stand against the use of games in the classroom. Wilson brings in David Shaffer over at U. Wisconsin, author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn to argue the point: “Wandering around in a rich computer environment without guidance is a bad way to learn … The knowledge that matters in any domain is the knowledge that experts have …” [I’ve long noted that programs don’t teach kids, teachers do; programs are just tools that teachers use. Skilled teachers will teach well with whatever tools are available.] Wilson also noted the last NECC get together had 18 conference topics dealing with incorporating games into core curricula. Likewise universities are increasingly ramping up efforts to inculcate gaming into teacher preparatory programs.

Finally, Wilson addresses the most vexing notion of all, that there is no scientific literature backing up the use of gaming in educational environments. To fight this myth, Wilson notes the plethora of research activity surrounding Harvard’s River City project, Indiana’s Quest Atlantis project, and one of the many research efforts focused on World of Warcraft.

This myth is particularly pernicious. The main focus of this blog is to explore the wealth of published research out there centered around instructional gaming. Just browsing through the last couple dozen or so blog entries should dispel the notion there is no research backing up educational videogames. Yet, the myth persists. Recently, Miguel Guhlin wrote in his excellent ed tech blog about the notion that Marc Prensky misstated research surrounding his ideas on digital natives and immigrants. Yet, Prensky is a practitioner, not a researcher.

Be sure and check out part two of Wilson’s article. He has made a significant contribution to the discussion with these two articles.

References
Wilson, L. (2007, October 15). Getting it wrong: Slaying myths about video games (part 2). Technology & Learning. [Online]. Available: http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604734