Interactivity, gaming and learning

A propos of this week's site visits assigned in Clio:

• The Lost Museum:  three stars because of the linkage between narrative, image and archival materials, albeit a sometimes tenuous one in terms of locational linkage, and the option to dig into available material or ignore it.  Great visuals, but they are not stand-alones and need the accompanying archival matter.
• Historic tale construction:  two stars.  No background material.  Just the assumption that the visitor knows about the Battle of Hastings and the Bayeux tapestry.  If I were teaching an elementary school or middle school history unit on the Middle Ages, I'd look at it as an adjunct teaching tool, but I need a meta-narrative.
• British Library Turning the Pages:  knocked my socks off.  This is what new media can do--bring fragile, priceless items out of the archives and give us access.  (I had seen many of these texts at the British Library about a year ago where they are available on touch screen computer consoles throughout the exhibit space.)  Purists might complain that images, such as those of the Flemish masters or the Qu'ran are neither as brilliant nor detailed as their originals, but so what?  They're good enough to establish the nature of the work, to provide a framework for analysis.  And mostly, we simply couldn't experience them in any way without web technology.

Each of these on-line exhibits is an interactive learning experience, (insert rough segue into topic of gaming as educational tool).   I'm not a computer gamer.  But I am the mother of a gamer, now a college student.

So,  was all this gaming a learning experience, I asked.  It was.  The Civilization series, Age of Empires, Warcraft, reconstructions of contemporary wars and battles all led to some level of historic inquiry into the era, the people, the culture. Having listened, ad infinitum, to the minutiae of battles between Medes and  Persians,  Moors and Vikings (yes, Moors and Vikings, I'm pretty sure that was one of the combinations--totally impossible groupings, weapons, and strategies, in any event), I was a little incredulous.  Nope, he said, there's also the "suppose things had happened differently" factor. 

Now he's a history and archaeology major. But the pursuit of subject-matter, I think, was a by-product of the process of gaming.  The intricacies of constructing and manipulating a world, the sense of control and mastery, winning battles (and three Phoenician archers are apparently able to conquer hordes of Mongols--who knew?).  That was the dominant draw.

Then there was Sim City, and the Sims (who suffered under the diabolical depredations of middle schoolers), but both offered introductions to public administration, financial policy, sociology.  And, again, that sense of control over a world.  Playing them was far better than non-interactive television viewing.

Of course, gaming is different from the on-line exhibit experience. Despite the non-linearity of progression through exhibits such as The Lost Museum, exhibit sites are constructed around specific learning goals and  circumscribed by the selection of materials.  Turning the Pages offers unlimited learning possibilities, but interactivity in this case is designed to maximize the presentation of materials more than to involve the visitor.

Most games are constructed with greater complexity than websites, and seem to offer more creative possibilities.  And as developmental tools, are they really so different from the non-digital role playing games predating computers and the internet?  In fact, despite parallels, they seem far richer than the old cops and robbers or the now-politically incorrect Cowboys and Indians of previous generations.

But I have a question: studies seem to indicate that the games battle and adventure that dominate the market are still predominantly "guy" things?  What  is the alternative and what are the consequences?

Comments

[Chris King]

Lee Ann -- as Gee points out, the market for games is very much a Darwinian contest. As long as games are making a very real connection to that elusive 15-35 year old male segment, adventure and battle games (as well as sports games) will remain dominant within the marketspace. There's no getting around that -- sex and violence sells. But then, that's no different than any other form of media.

The consequences were on display in class last week: as long as games focus on sex and violence, the true value of games as a learning tool will be obscured by people who are turned off by the very thing that makes them popular. The power of games to inspire inquisitiveness, encourage deeper understanding and focus attention is still misunderstood by people who are (rightly, in my opinion) outraged by the content of games like Grand Theft Auto and Ethnic Cleansing.

The alternative requires an understand the power of games vis a vis learning. The more the learning can be embedded in the game (and thus the less aware someone is of actually "learning"), the more powerful the effect. If we can get past the content and see the value in the framework within which that content is delivered, then we'll be able to utilize the value of games.