Shifting Strategies

My best friend, Eric, is much different than me. He has little interest in international travel, he's an engineer, he can build pretty much anything he sets his mind to, and, at least at first, he leans more toward the introverted.

But honestly, the difference that almost tore us apart was his intense dislike of video games.

Freshman year of college, I brought my Playstation 2 into our room - mostly as a way to watch DVDs and play CDs - but also to unwind after classes with a friendly round of Madden 2007. Eric instantly reacted. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't play video games while I'm in the room," he told me. I was fine with it: they can be distracting, and he came across as someone who valued his quiet time. But he later clarified. "It's not the distraction. I just hate video games. They don't require any real thought."

Therefore, I couldn't help but chuckle at this week's charge in Ed Tech: play a couple of video games and comment on their use and value in the classroom.

As a political science teacher, I took a look at iCivics first, which offers a number of games, including Power Play (a debate-like match in which you try to argue for state or federal supremacy with various issues like printing currency, setting rules for local and state elections, and many others) and We the Jury (another game based on strength of argument to deliberate a court case). These games were not the only ones I demoed, but they both used argument and logic as their basis for "winning," as opposed to choosing the right answer. In order to do well, you must present the most compelling argument/evidence in your favor to convince the opposition (the computer) of your view.

We the Jury also defined terms for players, like "punitive damages"

I was impressed: I thought games would be most useful for practicing memorization, or going through general concepts. (Another game, Do I Have a Right?, allows you to practice your knowledge of constitutionally protected rights and apply them to real-world scenarios by building up your own law firm with constitutional lawyers, each with his or her own expertise on an amendment's provisions.) However, these two games were able to provide players with a chance to understand how arguments work. More importantly, they convey the idea that, at least in a political science class, there is frequently more than one correct answer.

However, I had a couple of apprehensions about these games. The game supplied the players with arguments, which moved the skill needed in this game down a couple of rungs on Bloom's Taxonomy (assessing an argument for its strength is not the same as creating an original one). Sometimes, these supplied arguments were so outlandish and simple that I figured out to ignore these one first glance, rather than taking the time to assess them for their relative strength. For instance, in the jury room, various pieces of evidence were presented. When a surveillance video of the defendant was submitted, one argument in favor of its utility in the deliberations was, "I wonder if there's a surveillance camera in here!" These shorter sentences were rarely real arguments, instead appearing to be filler items created by uninspired developers. I quickly formed a new strategy: ignore the shorter sentences and look for longer ones. I won the game.

Perhaps I'm looking at this more from my lens. Maybe a student would absorb more from this type of game. I wonder: do you think a student could see through this and stop the learning process just to "win" the game?

This is my main worry about games in the classroom. Would students actually glean new skills and knowledge from these games, or would they form strategies to win, thereby limiting the learning involved in the game? How can we, as educators, mitigate this tendency?

Eric: you might have a point.

While Do I Have a Right? could help with understanding constitutional rights, I quickly shifted from focusing on the rights to building up my law firm. How can we keep students from getting distracted by these irrelevant details?