Every year, reviews of computer game sales for the festive season confirm their dominance in the entertainment market. For young people, these games are the most engaging digital application capable of challenging contemporary education while for most adults they are the latest scourge of modern society to alienate students and disrupt their academic achievement.
Such contrasting positions trigger some fundamental questions: What is the truth about games? How can we tackle these generational gaps? What constitutes a balanced education relevant to a knowledge society? Which learning processes are promoted by games that are not evident in curricular approaches? How can solitary and collaborative gaming be used to promote holistic learning?
In my thesis 'Learning through collaborative gaming: A process-oriented pedagogy' that I recently defended at the University of Joensuu, Finland, I focused on underlying cognitive, affective and psycho-social processes and interactions involved in playing such games. I also proposed that a play-oriented pedagogy is essential in developing a balanced education and thus the holistic development of learners.
Behind a game-based learning approach lies a more fundamental pedagogy that proposes innovative ways of presenting knowledge, developing skills relevant to a knowledge society and promotes positive attitudes towards learning and technology.
The concept of a 'balanced education' comprises traditional and technology-intensive learning and knowledge building experiences that aim to prepare people for jobs in a knowledge society. These experiences are characterised by continual technology-mediated interactions with ideas, theories and conceptual artefacts demanding workers capable of developing technology-intensive solutions to new problems by employing their previous experience, research skills and abilities to participate and contribute to knowledge-building teams.
Research points to the potential of games in developing such skills. Based on the natural play phenomenon, gaming is a fundamental experience in self-learning. It is a free space (and time) that young people fill in with their play projects where they can experience the pleasure of building and destroying. Triggered by curiosity and cognitive adventure, playful learning emphasises experimentation, exploration, trial and error, imagination, role-play and simulation of expertise.
Play offers young people the possibility to escape from all interferences by adults. Through play, they create a private territory (both real and imaginary) which enables them to understand the sense and the value of what they are learning, as a significant experience per se. This stands in stark contrast with teacher-driven curricular approaches that coerce learners into a consumer role.
When children play, they are the bearers of expertise, capable of acting in the role of expert and games provide the context for this experience. This raises serious questions about how we currently structure learning experiences in schools as it represents a pedagogical shift from representation to simulation of knowledge and expertise.
The literature review for my thesis presented a critical perspective of the positive and negative aspects of gaming. Young learners immersed in a hi-tech environment experience life in fundamentally different ways from previous generations. As 'digital natives' they tend to process information rapidly, use parallel approaches in learning based on multi-tasking and a 'graphics before text' approach. Being socially and entertainment-oriented, they emphasise immediate access to information and express their sense of connectedness and relatedness through extensive online social networks. This neo-millennial experience is greatly manifested in the latest generation of games.
Games promote a number of physiological, cognitive, motivational and social benefits. But gaming is often also associated with a range of negative effects including addiction, aggression and violence, social withdrawal, poor academic performance and health risks. Negative impressions, lack of information, folk theories linking gaming and individual behaviour and lack of debate about empirical results from research lead to pessimistic attitudes and misconceptions. Research shows that, on the whole, the use of educational games and simulations does not result in addictive behaviour and the benefits clearly outweigh any negative outcomes.
My research adopted a process-oriented methodology focussing on the major processes that give rise to different dimensions and levels of interactions resulting from the gaming task and group composition. These processes were quantified by identifying the type, frequency and directionality of interactions through surveys, analysis of video recorded gaming sessions and interviews with participants in collaborative gaming. This approach was highly acclaimed by researchers and reviewers of the published papers and the thesis.
The core of the thesis is a pedagogical model guiding educators to integrate digital games in the learning process and for promoting learning through designing games. The model proposed different levels and dimensions of interactions for collaborative gaming considering a range of individual, group and game factors.
Together with games, digital technologies provide a range of pedagogical scenarios that enrich the educational process of young people and equip them with key skills needed for a successful career in a knowledge society. My thesis proposed an educational strategy based on the two meanings of ICT: 'Information and Communication Technology' and 'Innovation and Creative Technology'. This is the complementary dimension to enrich current educational practice. Are we ready to take the challenge and move on to the next level in our education?
Seymour Papert, the eminent educational technologist who dedicated most of his life promoting learning through games, once said: "When it comes to learning, what can be done is a technological question; what should be done is a pedagogical question and what will be done is a political question."
Let our policies be guided by a balanced vision of the educational process for the digital generation.
Dr Bonanno is a full-time lecturer at the University of Malta's Faculty of Education, where he co-ordinates the Educational Technology, Research and Innovation programme.
For further information, e-mail: philip.bonanno@um.edu.mt.