Well, I seem to be at a loss on what to blog about next, so I decided to post my research paper I did last semester for Psychology. Ironically, this is probably one of my lowest scoring papers due to it's subject matter. My teacher's reasoning for my low grade was that I didn't use credible sources and references. I should have known I'd get a low grade though since he had made it clear earlier that "the vast majority of video games is filled with violence that corrupts those who play. Nothing, and I mean nothing good can come out of living in a virtual world."
Video Games:
A New Frontier in Learning
Learning is an active process in which a person acquires knowledge through practice and experience. This knowledge may be accepted, rejected, or forgotten depending on how much merit an individual places or values the information presented. If the information is accepted, the individual will modify his behavior to assimilate and utilize the information acquired. This active process needs to incorporate an active stimulus that assures the person that the changes he adopts will benefit him in future and potential behavior. Of course, how people respond to the stimulus offered largely depends on the approach or method used. Repetition and memorization are two of the standard learning techniques used in schools and have been proven adequate in teaching or conveying information in past generations. Yet in the last three decades a decline in learning and retaining information has evolved. Studies done in 1986 and 1996 found that American students fared poorly compared to Japanese and Chinese students in math and reading (Morris & Maisto, 2008 ). The question needs to be asked: How can academia adjust their teaching methods or approaches to learning to stimulate and encourage an active learning process for our students? New approaches that create an active learning environment must be investigated and not be labeled ineffective or dangerous based on bias of not understanding a new and a unique learning approach.
Winston Churchill stated: "I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught." Perhaps Mr. Churchill would have been intrigued with all the technological advances that have been employed since his era. Even still his interest may have peaked when he realized that learning through technology could be an individual process of teaching oneself. Technology has progressed to the point that interacting with information is a daily occurrence in most homes today. Through this technology the advent of computer and video games has become extremely popular and is starting to be viewed as interactive vehicles that promote and encourage information and learning processes. Perhaps these games may hold the key to discovering a unique learning genre; a learning process that is completely controlled and managed by the student. Interacting with a computer or video game allows the individual to make decisions based on circumstances that are revealed to him and allows him to accept information and adapt his response to the presented scenario accordingly. A group at the University of Texas in Austin has developed a new genre in video games. Their idea was "to create a game in which learning is indispensable, in other words, without learning NERO (the video game) could not exist as a game." (Stanley, Corneius, Miikkulainen, D'Silva, & Gold, 2005, p. 1). The game actually has the player assume control and initiate changes and skills in the game agents. In a sense, this game solely rests on the player's ability to relay his learning experiences and encourages the player to learn more so that his agents directly benefit through the player's learning process.
Researchers at the University of Toronto discovered that there is an unknown sex difference in spatial attention. The first experiment revealed that women do not perform as well as men in directing their attention to various or different objects. The second experiment involved the subjects' interaction with an action video game. It was then discovered that the women improved their spatial skills and caught up to the performance of the men. "Professor Ian Spence, director of engineering psychology laboratory in the Department of Psychology, speculates that the action video game experience 'may cause the expression of previously inactive genes which control the development of neural connections that are necessary for spatial attention. Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvement in spatial skills after only 10 hours of game playing and these improvements are maintained for many months.'" (Franca, 2007, p. 5). Professor Ian Spence then goes on to comment that these improvements in spatial skills could encourage or attract more women to enter the fields of mathematical science and engineering which would help create a gender balance in these fields and would in turn help promote economic health.
Another area in which video games are being utilized as an effective learning tool is in language and reading skills. The article "Undoing Dyslexia via Video Games" (2004) has introduced an approach to improve the specific learning areas of a person who has dyslexia. The definition of dyslexia is "a language -based learning disability and is often severe enough to make it difficult for children to succeed academically."("Undoing Dyslexia", 2004). Paula Tallal, PhD, a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, and Michael Merzenich, PhD, neuroscientist, teamed up "to develop neuroplasticity-based computerized video games that can 'rewire' the brains of children with this form of dyslexia and activate those areas of the brain critical to reading skills." ("Undoing Dyslexia", 2004). As the child plays the game, the game re-adjusts itself and advances to a new level when the child demonstrates mastery of the previous one. A study conducted in 2003 reveals that brain functions in dyslexic children changed after using a computer program. As stated in the article: "This application of psychological knowledge and new neuroscience-based learning methods blended with new technology has resulted in enhanced quality of life for children with language and reading problems. . ." ("Undoing Dyslexia", 2004).
The previous paragraphs have demonstrated that particular video games are able to address specific educational issues that are of concern in the learning and performing processes. James Paul Gee (2007) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison takes these specific examples of technology benefiting the act of learning a step further in suggesting that "game design involves modeling human interactions with and within complex virtual worlds, including learning process as part of these interactions." (p.1) He considers the process of designing a game similar to design research in educational psychology. Both areas use creativity to develop and convey methods or situations that will encourage learning through active participation. In a sense, the player of a video game adopts a character and that character's persona to engage in a progressive simulation that involves constant interaction and different approaches in which to accomplish a desired effect. For example, James Paul Gee suggests that students who are attempting to learn a special content area in school, that the area should be considered a special domain. This domain would encourage research and innovative avenues in which to approach a specific learning atmosphere. As James Paul Gee (2007) states in his Learning About Learning From a Video Game: Rise of Nations article: "When students are learning a content area in school---such as some area of science---this domain could be seen as a special world of its own, the world doing science in a certain way and acting with certain values. Students could be encouraged to take on identities as scientists of a certain sort, to see and think about themselves and their taken-for granted- everyday world in new ways. In this case, school would be functioning more like a good game than traditionally schooling which stresses knowledge apart from action and identity." (p. 7-8 ).
James Paul Gee also approaches learning and literacy through video games in his book, WHAT VIDEOS HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY. He has developed thirty-six learning principles that can be derived through interaction with video games. These principles that James Paul Gee has identified come from his own interaction and involvement with video games. Essentially he views the technology of video games as a process that a player goes through to reach a specified goal that can only be reached by adapting to change, learning new skills, and handling confrontation. According to James Paul Gee (2003), "They (video games) operate with-they build into their designs and encourage-good principles of learning, principles that are better than those in many of our skill-and-drill, back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools. It is not surprising that many politicians, policymakers, and their academic fellow travelers who think poor children should be content with schooling for service jobs don't like video games. They say they don't like them because they are violent. But, in reality, video games do violence to these people's notions of what makes learning powerful and schools good and fair." (p. 205).
Research into the effects of video games and the methods that encourage and instill learning processes is still in its infant stage towards becoming a viable alternative to standardized learning. Technology has presented us with a vast realm of uncharted discoveries and it is our obligation to the future of learning to investigate and experiment with the effects and the potential success of video games upon interactive learning. As George Santayana once said, "The wisest mind has something yet to learn."
References
APA Online: Psychology Matters (2004). Undoing Dyslexia via Video Games. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://www.psychologymatters.org/dyslexia.html
Franca, S. (2007) Students Key Members of ePresence Development Team. University of Toronto Bulletin: Research News. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/spence/University%20of%20Toronto%20Bulletin%200925-07%20Page%205.pdf
Gee, J. (2007). Learning About Learning from a Video Game: Rise of Nations. Stanford University SimWorkshop. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://simworkshop.stanford.edu/05_0125/reading_docs/Rise%20of%20Nations.pdf
Gee, J. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Morris, C., and Maisto, A. (2008 ). Understanding Psychology (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Stanley, K., Cornelius, R., Miikkulainen, R., D'Silva, T., and Gold, A. (2005). Real-time Learning in the NERO Video Game. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/downloads/papers/stanley.aiide05demo.pdf