Skill-Life at Games for Change Conference
I attended the Games For Change conference in New York last week, and was impressed by the enthusiasm by the attendees and presenters alike. It is inspiring to be surrounded by people who not only believe in using games as a positive agent of social change, but who are actively utilizing them as such. One group is designing a public school to work like a game. How do you utilize game mechanics to mold the students’ experience? What type of activities do they take part in? What information is available to them as a “game” that would not be available in a traditional school setting? Many fascinating explorations into the world of using games to not only educate, but change and alter behavior.
One study performed by Joseph Kahne at www.civicsurvey.org found that games receive equal attention across socioeconomic divides. The inequalities of education and affluence do not exist in game spaces. When left to their own, young people are equally interested in the opportunities in games. When choosing their own activities, kids gravitate equally toward games across the board. Parents whose kids show signs of isolation or are not involved in the community, cannot necessarily point to the child’s involvement in games, but must look at their involvement with their child. The best predictor of a child’s involvement with a community is found in the parents’ involvement in their community.
James Gee shared an example about assessing a learner’s success at understanding subject material in games. In Halo, if a player completes the game on Difficult, you would not give the player a test to see if they know Halo. The fact they reached that level of achievement is proof they have reached the that level of understanding. Likewise, if you ask a group of kids to go build and set off a nuclear device, the resulting obituary would not say, “Oh, it’s a shame. We will never know if they learned Physics.” The activity in which they were engaged required them to learn physics to complete the task.
Similarly, by completing the CentsCity game, a player must demonstrate they understand how to manage not only day to day finances, but long term investment goals as well. The assessment is built into the experience. In order to complete the game, they must know and utilize the financial concepts taught.
Games essentially provide people the opportunity to learn a multitude of skills without the learning being the focus of the experience. They set goals or are given goals which in order to achieve, require them to learn a set of skills and acquire a certain level of knowledge to accomplish. However, the goal is fun, and the learning happens in a deep, meaningful way.