The Connection Between 21st Century Skills and Game-Based Learning
Not surprisingly and as mentioned earlier, one of the findings that emerged from our research was that students spend a large proportion of their time out-of-school playing digital games. International trends are in line with what we found and suggest that growing numbers of people around the world are playing computer games. As the economic and social implications of this phenomenon are just beginning to be understood, educators are attempting to find ways to appropriate the best features of game-based learning and bring them into the formal classroom. In his book, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, David Williamson Shaffer (2007) describes a wide range of new learning games that are emerging from university research labs at Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and MIT. Because these videogames give students the chance to creatively manipulate a virtual world, Shaffer (2007) claims that the games can promote creativity and innovation, abilities that are more important than ever in today's competitive global economy. His most radical assertion is that students who play videogames will think and learn very differently than students of prior generations. Shaffer (2007) states that rather than collecting facts and skills, students will learn how to creatively adapt and apply knowledge in a variety of real-world situations. Not surprisingly, the two 21st century skills of complex communication and expert problem solving (Levy & Murnane, 2004) are dominant features that cut across most game genres. For the most part, traditional schools are not designed to provide learning contexts that promote these two skills. Problem-based learning scenarios have been used for years to try to approximate real life problems and have met with some success in education. But typically problem-based learning modules have not approached the cognitive complexity and fast-paced processing that game contexts afford.
The contemporary work environment is about managing complex information streams, which increasingly is a critical part of job performance. Games can provide a context for situated learning in which players are immersed in complex problem solving tasks that require expertise. Examining the role of expertise in modern culture, John Bransford and his colleagues (e.g., Schwartz, Bransford, & Sears, 2005) distinguish between routine and adaptive expertise. Routine experts are adept at solving every day routine problems; adaptive experts exhibit flexibility, which is highly valued in today’s workplace since knowledge and skill requirements change significantly over the course of a career. While routine experts may be efficient and technically skillful, they may not be able to flexibly adapt to solve new problems; adaptive experts are able to adapt to as well as seek out new learning situations (Hatano & Oura, 2003). Adaptive expertise is clearly a key feature of game environments. Beck and Wade (2004) describe five characteristics that distinguish game environments as adaptive:
- Rapidly analyze new situations.
- Interact with characters they don’t really know.
- Solve problems quickly and independently.
- Think strategically in a chaotic world.
- Collaborate effectively in teams.
Beck and Wade’s (2004) characteristics are illustrated in both online commercial games, as well as academic games that are being designed for research purposes. Following is a discussion of Beck and Wade’s (2004) gameplay characteristics relative to these two categories.
Online Commercial Gaming Environments
Beck and Wade’s characteristics are evident in commercial massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like World of War Craft, or Everquest 2. MMOGs share many of the same features of other games, except they are played online. Steinkuehler (2004) asserts that these games can be cognitively demanding, requiring exploration of complex, multi-dimensional problem spaces, as well as empirical model building systems. These environments require the negotiation of meaning and values within the online community, as well as the coordination of avatars and multiple forms of text. Civilization III is an example of a commercial entertainment game that provides extensive experience in problem solving. As players lead a civilization from 4000 BC to the present, they seek out geographical resources, manage complex economies, and hold diplomatic summits with other nations. Squire (2004) conducted a study to see what students learned about social studies from Civilization III, even though the game is designed primarily for entertainment. Although Squire (2004) found serious challenges to using the complex game environment of Civilization III, he concluded that the students in his study developed various conceptual understandings (e.g. monotheism and monarchy) in world history, geography, and politics through Civilization III gameplay.
Following up on Squire’s research, a group of North Carolina State researchers (Lee, 2007b) explored specific teacher-directed learning that emerged while high school students played Civilization III. Gameplay for students in the class featured in this study differed from the typical gameplay in several ways. Civilization III gameplay is typically single-player and quite lengthy. Advanced games can last 40 hours or more and usually involve the development of complex multilayered civilizations with dozens of cities and possibly hundreds of individual game tasks underway. The gameplay studied here involved a high school history class of twelve students and their teacher collaborating about specific moves. The game was played over nine class periods averaging 27 minutes per day for a total of just over four hours. Gameplay began in the tutorial mode, which involves regular gameplay supported with tutorial screens that explain and even suggest specific actions a player might take, including building a city, working, exploring, and warring, among other things. After two days of tutorial play, the class played a regular game, building three cities and reaching several game goals, including mining for gold/wealth, defending cities with walls, fortifying military forces, road construction, establishing embassies, constructing a palace, building a colossus, and building a granary. The class also made several cultural advancements, including developing the following game technologies and skills: the wheel, bronze and iron working, ceremonial burial, horseback riding, the alphabet, a code of laws, and mathematics. Each of these advancements was completed as a result of teacher-guided class-based decisions made during the gameplay. The teacher and students discussed the options for gameplay that were available, and the teacher often guided students directly toward their selections.
The class’s gameplay reflected Beck and Wade’s (2004) characteristics of gameplay, in particular strategic thinking and collaboration. Students worked together to make strategic decisions, often taking the advice of their teacher but sometimes reaching decisions different than the teacher recommended. For example, the class decided to build their first city in a low lying area against the advice of the teacher. Decisions such as this one reflect three primary forms of strategic decision-making which relate to the following: 1) cultural advances, 2) game units to build, and 3) locations of existing units. Students had to make decisions about cultural advances. These decisions involved the class weighing options about the short and long term benefits of acquiring certain cultural attributes. Students had to decide what types of game units to build. With the exception of Washington, each city was able to build new units. Washington was limited due to the city’s location in a low-lying area and the resulting inability to maintain stable growth. Students in the class had to decide where to move existing units and what to have those units do after they moved.
In another study of online gameplay, a group of North Carolina State researchers (Lee, 2007a) studied how young children interacted in online social gaming environments. This study reflects an emerging phenomena in which children and adults can play games at all times in ongoing and life-situated contexts using computers, televisions, handheld devices, and even cell phones. As these environments have proliferated, educators have become increasingly interested in the dynamics of what happens within online social gaming worlds such as Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, Maple Story, Millsberry, Neopets, and Webkinz. Scholars are voicing an increasingly common belief that the experiences children have while engaging social gaming environments demand new literacies and related skills (see Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robinson, & Weigel, 2006; New London Group, 1996). Calls for educators to give serious thought to how gaming environments facilitate learning have permeated recent popular and scholarly press (see Beck & Wade, 2006; Gee, 2006; Johnson, 2005; Prensky & Thiagarajan, 2007; Shaffer, 2007).
Online social games are often embedded in immersive web-based environments that enable players to interact around like interests using avatars, text-based communication, real-life like contexts, and various levels of social interaction related to civic concepts such as rules, authority, and responsibility as well as local economies (virtual and real). Thomas (2006) argues that these environments, sometimes called “pervasive games,” do not follow the typical patterns of gameplay which suggest that play, with specific start and stop signals, is outside of real-life experiences (p. 42). Evidence of social play in such gaming environments has been reported by Inal and Cagiltay (2007) who studied the flow experiences of children playing games in social settings finding that “children have a tendency to form a group while playing” (p. 462). Others have argued that online gaming environments for children are problematic with regard to the uses of immersive advertising (Grimes & Shade, 2005), intergenerational differences and dispositions regarding gaming (Aarsand, 2007), increased social isolation among gamers (Colwell & Payne, 2000), and gaming violence and addiction (Glazer, 2006).
In this study, five children ages 5-7 engaged in gameplay in the Webkinz online gaming world. Webkinz is a online social gaming environment that enables players to care for virtual pets that are representations of stuffed animals which must be purchased with real money. Each stuffed animal includes a code that unlocks the virtual pet and other resources. In addition to caring for pets, players can accumulate virtual money by completing tasks and playing games. This virtual money can be used to purchase food, housing, toys, and other items for the virtual pets. Webkinz also allows players to interact in various ways. Findings in this study emerged around concepts of online identity, situated-learning, and self-monitoring. The online social worlds that children engaged in their Webkinz gameplay and the online identities they assumed were alternatively described as real and not real, but consistently different than the physical place the children inhabited. Students agreed that situated learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) could take place in online gaming worlds but were limited in their understanding of how that learning was situated in their own social lives. Students also expressed an understanding that gameplay was an act that started and stopped, but interestingly they did not monitor their gameplay or the related social aspects of the gameplay solely within the constructs of the gaming environment. For example, talk about gameplay permeated their expressions of how they interacted with friends in and out of the online environment. During their gameplay, children engaged in a constant real-life chatter about what they were doing and how they could play in the online environment together. The children also sought out other friends who were not present to play with in the online Webkinz gaming environment. By blurring the lines between reality and online gameplay, the students in this study engaged in the sort of collaboration highlighted by Beck and Wade (2004) as characteristic of gaming.
