While best practices in education have seen some dramatic shifts over the last century, the basic format of learning has been surprisingly resistant to reform, despite gigantic leaps made over the same time period in areas such as technology.
The use of games in learning has been around for a long time, but is only now being widely received as a mainstream fundamental of teaching for any subject or context. Once seen as a useful tool to break up the drudgery of school lessons or keep children engaged, games are now credited with much more learning power than as a mere distraction or motivator. For the first time in history, games are also starting to be used prolifically in adult corporate education.
The power of games for learning lies in their instinctive appeal. The theory of Homo Ludens, i.e. Man the Player, states that it is human nature to unconsciously make everything we do into a game.
Dutch historian and the author of the Homo Ludens theory, Johan Huizinga, points out that one of the most significant human and cultural aspects of play is that it has to be fun and this is certainly true in the context of educational games. Judy Willis, a neurologist and teacher, confirms ‘brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops too,’ and this state of ‘play’ is one of the main attributes of games that facilitates learning. Much of the activity of play comes from failing to immediately reach the goal set out by the games rules – the player must use available data to try again and again to achieve their intended outcome – and yet the player doesn’t experience this failure as an obstacle. There is something about play that activates a tenacity and persistence in the learner as they strive for mastery and allows them to take risks or try out tactics which would be impossible in real life. What’s more, if you look at what makes a good game ‘fun’, it becomes clear that it is in fact the stage by stage learning process which is motivating, engaging and rewarding the player.
To be successful in today’s increasingly complex world, learners need to be able to find, analyze and use information on the fly, rather than just regurgitate knowledge. Games, by their active and situational nature, support this type of learning perfectly. They are designed to create a compelling or complex problem which needs to be solved through exploration: Well-designed games draw learners into virtual environments which look and feel familiar so that they can quickly make the connection between their real life work and the learning experience – this feeling of relevance is especially important for adult learning.
Within a game-based learning environment the player works toward a goal, making decisions and experiencing the consequences of those decisions along the way. The ability to experiment and make mistakes in a risk-free setting keeps the learner motivated and offers practical and easily transferable skills that they can use in a real life situation, as seen in one logistics company’s video-based simulation program, eVideo 2.0. This simulated warehouse environment contains 22 exercises following the core question “Where is the parcel?” The learner must help his colleague complete different tasks such as interpreting delivery notes or filling out forms for different situations.
Games can also be especially useful for introducing a topic and engaging a new audience. Three key triggers of game playing which are powerful for learning are:
- When players express a wish to try the game
- When players become invested in the game and asks to save their progress and come back to it later.
- When players offer to show other players what they have learned.
The Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) is well aware of the widespread appeal of games and decided to use this format to introduce members of the public to the implications in changes of land use and water control. The game shows a typical Brandenburg landscape with water-courses, lakes, forests, farmland and residential areas, and then simulates long term climate scenarios over a 50 year period. The gamer plays the role of regional adviser for water management and has to make decisions about how the land and water is used in the face of various conflicts of interest. This game was particularly engaging for people of all ages and backgrounds because the scenarios were recreated as realistically and vividly as possible.
Hands-on learning as a concept isn’t new. However, game based learning as an alternative has several advantages. It is cost-effective because it can be used multiple times for multiple users, and low risk as making a mistake is not going to compromise safety or cost money. With game-based learning, a learner can also practice one scenario repetitively and experience scenarios which would not be possible to simulate in real life, such as an emergency landing on a flight simulator. As its merits become more widely accepted, game-based learning will no doubt be seen less as a controversial topic and more as a learning tool for educators everywhere.
