Indiana University Bloomington

Gaming in Education

Transcript

  "Gaming in Education" produced by Hillary Demmon.  For some reason or another, you say when you're playing a game it's fun.  But when we give you homework to do, it's not fun.  No, no, uh-uh.  Well, you see, that's why we're studying games.  It's because we want to be able to give you content assignments  where you're playing a game and having just as much fun learning  as you are when you're playing a game.  Robert Appelman, IU School of Education, Coordinator of Technology Education:  My name is Robert Appelman. They call me Doctor Bob here.  Now, if you go into trial and error learning,  the methodology is: give me something to play with,  I'll try it, I'll die, I'll fail, I'll do all kinds of things  that are what used to be considered negative in education,  but I'm going to learn and I'm going to understand.  Actually, I'm going to have a broader knowledge  by failing and by trying out what works.  We need to design games that are good for learning.  We're trying to look at the strategies they're using  to solve the problems that are in the games.  We've picked the games specifically for certain types of problems.  Engagement is one of the big things that we're trying to define.  There's two type of engagement:  There's fun engagement, which is usually exhibited by  laughing, smiling, those types of things.  However, when you get a gamer into a zone, they're pretty catatonic  and the only thing you can see moving is their fingers or thumbs,  and then you ask them how did you like that game.  They say "Oh, it was fantastic, I really enjoyed it,"  and there was no facial expression change at all.  But, the Wii is one thing that is changing some of that.  They have to get up and move around.  We've had some situations with the Quidditch,  when they're playing a new game, and especially multi-play.  They have a lot more affective component,  and they do a lot of socialization.  Students learning how to play a game:  "They attempt to score a goal by throwing the quaffle through one of the goal hoops.  So B is to shoot and A is to what?  Tackle. OK."  "Tackle. Action: Tackle."  "Wait, B is to shoot and A is to tackle? B is to shoot…"  "Quite a violent game, isn't it?"  "B is to shoot and A is to tackle?"  "Yep.  Go."  "Come on, tackle, tackle.  Wait, what's tackle? What's tackle?"  "A is to tackle."  Robert Appelman:  The world is quite different  and our generation doesn't understand it at all.  Even the generation that followed us is still  kind of brought up in the old mode  and so they aren't necessarily what you'd call "gamers"  who might try to play.  This is the only department that is doing empirical research  on game play in the world.  Hopefully, we'll be known for that.