Education Insights with James Paul Gee

My teammate +Cheri has been mulling over the idea of how education and digital tools interact, but she's had trouble honing in on a specific idea. I ran into a lot of ideas tied to education in the book that I read, "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" by James Paul Gee, which I have reviewed briefly in previous posts. This is a great opportunity to also go into more depth about the material in the book. I'll keep my post to a few specific points.

The cool think about JPG's point of view is that his solution is not necessarily to incorporate games in the classroom, but rather to take concepts that are inherent in video games that facilitate learning and find ways to apply them to the classroom.

A. Video games challenge gamers.
This is so important to learning. On page 70 of his book, JPG says,

"Sadly in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a cirriculum that makes few real demands on them." 

I could not agree more, and this goes right along with an issue that Cheri brought up in her own video review - the issue of possibly separating the "good" learners from the "bad" learners in an effort to challenge them more appropriately. JPG points out that video games are designed to be challenging, and I've read before in video game design books (like Bob Bates' "Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games) that a video game must be challenging to be interesting or the player will be bored. If it's too hard, it will be frustrating and the player will give up. Video games are inherently designed to give us the right level of challenge for our skill level and to reward us as we overcome obstacles, then continue giving us more challenges. You can't perfect a skill in a game and coast through the rest of the game with that skill anymore. JPG points out strategies he tried to keep using in first person shooter games he was trying to beat and how he realized through different trials and bosses that he needed to adapt and create new strategies to overcome tougher obstacles. If a student realizes that he can figure out what assigned reading is about from the first 15 minutes of discussion in class and use that to do well on tests and in the classroom, why would he ever pick up the assigned book? A lot of skilled students realize that they don't need to learn the material to "win" at class. They need to learn the teacher. (Not JPG's point, but something I'm hypothesizing right now. I had a religion teacher a couple semesters ago and I quickly learned that I didn't need to spend more time with scripture to ace his tests. I needed to understand the points he highlighted in class because he had very subjective views about the scriptures and that came through in his tests. There are "cheats" that apply to most teachers. Example: if you let them know ahead of time that you have a conflict, you are more likely to work it out and save your grade. If you turn in an assignment late with no explanation, it will get marked more harshly.)

B. The value of taking on new identities
Video games allow players to take on new identities. As players experience more games, they are put in the shoes of a myriad of characters. In Pikmin, the player must act and think as though she is in the shoes of a spaceman who is trying to repair a ship before his air supply runs out. She must be able to experiment with her environment and discover the best ways to find the ship pieces before her 30 days are up. In Sonic Adventure, the player is called upon to identify with the "heroes" of the game - Sonic, the main character and his friends - as well as the "villains" of the game - Dr. Robotnik and his teammates.

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While taking on the role of the "villain", a player must reconcile the idea of "bad guy as good guy". While we as players may recognize that the villains' aim to blow a hole in the earth is not very moral, we find ways to identify with their situation and accept their values as our values. Other games take on very complex moral arguments, like the morality of killing in survival situations, which is presented in a chillingly realistic way in The Last of Us. +Paul Bills has posted videos discussing the potential value of experiencing violence in this game.

JPG points out that in the classroom, a lot of students come in as "damaged" learners. They have come to accept identities that leave them disadvantaged in the classroom. These are identities like "slow reader," "bad at math," "doesn't like school," and so forth. In order to "repair" these "damaged" learners, JPG says that 3 things must happen.

1. The learner must be enticed to try, even if the learner has a good reason to be afraid.

So if we have a student who is "bad at math", perhaps he has taken on this identity because of poor math scores in the past or publicly showing his poor skills by giving wrong answers in class.

2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort, even if he has little motivation to do so.

If the learner gets a reward for no work, no progress has been made.

3. The learner must achieve some level of success when this effort is expended.

If the learner works really hard and gets no reward, progress is unlikely. For example, if you publish a book that nobody buys, you are likely to set it aside for a few years.

C. Precursor Domains
If you figured out how to make word art in Windows '95 like the rest of us in elementary school (the rest of my generation, to be more exact) you are probably more likely to understand text manipulation in a variety of image programs like MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and a variety of word processors that have followed Word.

In video games, if you have played one first person shooter, you are likely to pick up your second first person shooter a little faster. You realize that there is probably a button that will switch your weapons, one that will fire the weapon, and the dots in the corner of the screen are part of a map that shows yourself in relation to your enemies and your environment.

In the classroom, you will have an easier time understanding a new concept if you can link the experience to something you have previously mastered.

Textbooks in the classroom will make no sense if you have no experience in the "world" of this textbook, just like it doesn't make sense to read a video game manual or walkthrough if you have never played the game.

D. Psychosocial Moratoriums
This is a fancy name for a place where you can learn and real world risks are lowered. If you die in a video game, you can go back to a save point and try again.

In the classroom, if you get a wrong answer on a test it goes on your grade card for your parents to see. JPG  suggests that learning could be easier if the risks of a wrong answer are lowered.

James Paul Gee's book is free at the HBLL and browsing through it could definitely lead to some topics that spark your interest and help you narrow your topic, Cheri. You could also search for people who are writing similar books or speaking at the same conferences where he's been speaking (he seems to do plenty of lectures). On my preview post about JPG's book I found a related author Keith Devlin, and others in the class have shared about Ian Bogost, who might have good insight.

There's a lot of weird stuff you can teach people to do well with video game principles! Why not, then, normal stuff like math and science? (Which could also be considered weird but let's not get into that discussion.)