Hello! As this week’s theme is on the use of games and gamification in teaching, we sat down with a friend who’s an avid gamer and more importantly, a teacher who advocates on the use of games in teaching.
Jose Mari Carpena is a Social Engagement Lecturer, social entrepreneur, and the guy behind the Youtube channel Don’t Touch Me where one of his videos talks about Games and Education.
1. For you, what is a game?
A game is basically a self-contained narrative, implicitly stated or otherwise, wherein a user (the player) has to achieve a specific goal, or create a goal for themselves. A game should be inherently fun to its target audience, and equally important, should be accessible to the target audience as well.
2. What makes games fun or interesting?
That’s a really broad, but really good, question. Let’s zoom out for a sec, and look at games in the “real” world: why is “hide-and-seek” fun? Why do we really like to play in general? My answer primarily revolves around the Self-Determination Theory by Ryan and Deci, which says that we are more motivated to do a certain task when our three basic psychological needs are satisfied: competence, relatedness, and autonomy.
First, some of them challenge us. When we succeed at doing a certain quest, we feel competent. When we fail an extremely hard boss, we try and try again to finally kill it, which gives us a sense of accomplishment. From a game design perspective, this is really important. Make a game too easy, the player gets bored (i.e., farming a low-level mob in an RPG as a high-level character); make a game too hard, the player might just give up and not continue playing (i.e., some people think that Dark Souls was too hard of a game to even have fun). In the real world, winning a game of tag gives us a boost, which may make us play more. But if we keep losing and losing a specific game, like chess perhaps, then we might lose interest in the long run.
Second, we get to play (for some games at least), with our friends. League of Legends, Among Us, DotA, Phasmophobia, and a whole bunch of games let you play with your peers. This fulfills our need for relatedness, or in more general terms, our social needs. The more we get along with people in a certain context or task, the more we’re motivated. Yes, there are games which you play solo, like The Sims, RimWorld, and Papers Please, but the other factors come into play in these cases.
Third, some games give us a choice. In FrostPunk, wherein you manage a population of survivors, you’re given a choice: do you make children work to gather more critically needed resources, possibly injuring them, or do you just let them stay in a Child Shelter to keep them safe, but not getting any extra metal or wood which you need to survive? Less serious choices are also present in other games, such as choosing what class you’ll play as. Such choices appeal to our need for autonomy, that we can make decisions for ourselves. This is why The Sims is extremely popular: you can control the virtual life of your Sim so a great degree of freedom. What will your house look like? What career will they pursue? How many kids will you have? The sense of autonomy and freedom you get in The Sims is its selling point.
3. What are some games you have already used in teaching?
SpaceTeam! It’s a free game wherein you and some crewmates have to relay commands to survive. I use it to teach my students proper communication. When I have them try the game out, they just shout over each other and tend not to listen to others. After 15 minutes of playing, I give them a short lecture on proper communication, and let them play again. They become better at communicating with each other, and tend to survive longer than earlier.
4. What are your main reasons for advocating the use of video games in teaching?
Learning video game mechanics is very similar to pedagogy. When you lose HP when you get hit by an enemy, you try not to get hit again – that’s behaviorism. Group certain squadmates with a specific strength, like maybe spearmen, to take down cavalry – that’s cognitivism. Build a roller coaster or an automated farming system in Minecraft – that’s constructivism. Serious games (“educational games”) can be directly designed to use these pedagogies so that the game elements can address learning goals. For example, Nitro Type is a serious game aimed at improving students’ typing skills which relies heavily on behaviorism. In a typical racing game, your car slows down when you make a sharp turn, transition gears incorrectly, and apply too much brakes – leading to less wins. In Nitro Type, your car slows down when you make a typographical error.
Besides serious games, commercial-off-the-shelf games, with the control and modification of teachers, can be used similarly, especially with constructivism. Using Cities: Skylines, teachers can help students understand the value of city planning by letting them explore the effects of traffic on various services such as coal delivery, fire emergency services, and ambulances. Minecraft can be likewise used to teach students many lessons, such as agriculture or even electrical grids.
5. What are some basic tips you can give to teachers who would like to try using games in teaching?
Most teachers aren’t gamers, and that’s totally understandable. Most of us didn’t grow up with the technology millenials and Gen Z use today, and most probably haven’t been able to play the games associated with those technologies – and it’s fine. With that, I suggest that you start playing simple games first. Start with Candy Crush (my mom always plays that), or any game which you may find appealing. Start with casual games, and then explore. When playing, ask yourself, “What aspects of this game can relate to my subject?”
So there, whether you’re an avid gamer too or not, there are certainly lessons games can teach not just our students, but us teachers. Do check out his video on Games and Education: How Video Games Can Help Students Learn as well as the book list in my previous blog post to get your gaming journey started! 🙂
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