My poster and accompanying paper for PERC 2012: "Improving Physics Instruction by Analyzing Video Games."
Abstract: Video games can be very powerful teaching systems, and game designers have become adept at optimizing player engagement while scaffolding development of complex skills and situated knowledge. One implication is that we might create games to teach physics. Another, which we explore here, is that we might learn to improve classroom physics instruction by studying effective games. James Gee, in his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007), articulates 36 principles that make good video games highly effective as learning environments. In this theoretical work, we identify 16 themes running through Gee’s principles, and explore how these themes and Gee’s principles could be applied to the design of an on-campus physics course. We find that the process pushes us to confront aspects of learning that physics instructors and even physics education researchers generally neglect, and we suggest some novel ideas for course design.
[Now I just gotta write it!]
Exciting!
ReplyDeleteI am teaching an E&M class this fall and am thinking about what that classroom would look like if designed from this perspective and it seems overwhelming. Do you envision working towards the entire course working around the video game reward system (tutorials,experience points, achievements, leveling, etc) or using video games to supplement instruction via effective use of simulations and/or games?
Neither. I'm not so interested in applying the superficial "surface features" of video games to teaching (levels, points, etc.), and developing actual games/simulations is way more resource-intensive than I can undertake. I want to figure out how to apply some of the deeper principles of video games (á la Gee) to my teaching. For example, I'm imagining a Modern Physics course taught along the lines of an alternate-history role-playing game (not computerized), in which students develop characters as turn-of-the-century physicists, and NPCs representing historical scientists can publish theories, new experimental results, etc.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, perhaps: Grant Wiggins nails it in the second half of this blog post: http://wp.me/pRqx7-aJ
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteI would love to develop games/simulations to apply the deeper 'Gee' principles of video games. I'm scheming to figure out how to deal with the resource-intensive problem, more on that in a separate post later...
The role-playing sounds promising. Its kind of like taking a traditional course's historical context for the material and making students work through it for themselves. I'm imagining something like: each student group (or each student alone) plays a scientist in an alternate-history that you can describe in terms of the existing understanding of the nature of light (aether, waves, etc) and electromagnetism. There are so many ways to proceed from there.
also: thanks for the intro to that Blog!
ReplyDeleteDo you know of any others that I should be following? I've been reading a few video game development blogs but haven't found anything good that is more education-based.