How Games Help Us Learn | Game-Based Learning
Summary
TLDRThis video explores how games enhance learning through three primary methods: increasing engagement by making activities fun, directly teaching concepts or skills, and preparing students for future learning. It highlights various examples, including 'Kahoot', 'Math Jump', 'Was it Trouble', 'Coding Ocean', and 'Dragon Box', emphasizing the importance of explicitly connecting game experiences to learning contexts to ensure educational effectiveness.
Takeaways
- 🎮 Games can enhance learning by making educational activities more enjoyable, as seen in classroom apps like Kahoot which gamify question answering.
- 🏆 Adding elements like points, leaderboards, and badges can motivate students and make learning more engaging.
- 🤔 Gamification involves recasting tasks into game-like scenarios, such as solving math problems to keep a character alive in 'Math Jump'.
- 🐰 'Was It Trouble' uses a storyline and gamified elements to teach linear equations in a fun and engaging way.
- 📚 Games can directly teach concepts or skills, with examples like strategy games (e.g., Go, Chess) that develop strategic thinking applicable beyond the game.
- 🚀 The US military used airplane spotter cards in traditional games to educate civilians about identifying enemy aircraft during WWII.
- 💡 Game design can be centered around learning goals, integrating the mechanics with the educational content, as seen in 'Coding Ocean' and 'Dragon Box'.
- 🌱 Games can prepare students for future learning by introducing concepts in a fun way, such as 'Stats Invaders' which introduces statistical distributions.
- 🎓 Commercial video games like 'Call of Duty' and 'Civilization' can be used as a preparatory step before lectures on related topics.
- 🔗 The effectiveness of games in learning depends on making explicit connections between the game content and the educational objectives.
- 📈 Research shows that games can facilitate deeper understanding when used in conjunction with traditional educational methods, but the connection must be clear.
Q & A
What are the three ways games can help in learning?
-Games can help in learning by making things more fun, directly teaching concepts or skills, and preparing students for future learning.
How does the game 'Kahoot' motivate students to learn?
-'Kahoot' motivates students by turning answering questions into a competitive game where points and leaderboards make the learning process more enjoyable.
What is the purpose of the 'Math Jump' app?
-The 'Math Jump' app makes solving arithmetic problems more engaging by incorporating a character that dies if problems are not solved correctly, thus adding a gamifying element.
How does the game 'Was It Trouble' make learning linear equations fun?
-'Was It Trouble' gamifies learning linear equations by presenting them in a different context, involving puzzles and rescuing characters, making the task more appealing.
What is the difference between gamification and game-based learning?
-Gamification involves adding game elements like points and competition to non-game activities to make them more fun, while game-based learning involves designing the game mechanics around specific learning goals.
How do strategy games like 'Go' and 'Chess' contribute to learning?
-Strategy games like 'Go' and 'Chess' can teach strategic thinking and decision-making skills that can be applied in various real-life situations beyond the game.
What is the concept behind 'Coding Ocean'?
-'Coding Ocean' is a game designed to teach programming by having players solve problems and direct a ship using command cards, thus learning programming concepts as they play.
How does 'Dragon Box' help in teaching math to young kids?
-'Dragon Box' uses visual representations of numbers and interactive tasks to help students develop early numeracy skills and familiarity with numbers.
What is the purpose of 'Stats Invaders' in learning statistics?
-'Stats Invaders' is designed to prepare students for future learning in statistics by familiarizing them with concepts like distributions and standard deviation through gameplay.
Why is it important to make explicit connections between the game and the learning context?
-Making explicit connections between the game and the learning context is crucial for facilitating understanding and ensuring that students can apply what they've learned from the game to real-life situations or academic tasks.
Can a single game leverage all three approaches for learning?
-Yes, a game can leverage all three approaches for learning by making the activity fun, directly teaching concepts or skills, and preparing students for future learning experiences.
Outlines
🎮 Games as Motivation and Fun Learning Tools
The first paragraph discusses how games can enhance learning by making the process more enjoyable and engaging. It highlights the use of games like Kahoot, which turns question-answering into a competitive activity, and Math Jump, where solving arithmetic problems keeps a character alive. The key principle here is that the gamification elements, such as points, leaderboards, and badges, transform mundane tasks into exciting challenges. The example of 'Was It Trouble' is also mentioned, where solving linear equations is disguised as freeing cute animals, making the learning process fun and less obvious.
🤔 Games Teaching Concepts and Skills
This paragraph delves into how games can directly impart knowledge and skills. It contrasts games like Mario, which improve skills relevant only within the game, with strategy games like Go and Chess that teach strategic thinking applicable in real-life scenarios. The paragraph also touches on the use of game mechanics in educational contexts, such as WWII airplane spotter cards, where the learning is an add-on rather than an integral part of the game. The concept of designing games with learning goals in mind is introduced, exemplified by 'Coding Ocean' and 'Dragon Box', where the gameplay mechanics are closely tied to the educational objectives.
🌟 Games as Preparation for Future Learning
The third paragraph explores the role of games in preparing students for future learning experiences. It uses 'Stats Invaders' as an example, where playing the game helps students grasp basic statistical concepts like distributions, making them more receptive to related lectures. The paragraph also mentions the use of commercial video games like 'Call of Duty' and 'Civilization' as a preparatory step before learning about WWII history. The key takeaway is that games can 'plow the field' of the brain, making students more receptive to new information.
🔗 Making Explicit Connections for Effective Learning
The final paragraph emphasizes the importance of making explicit connections between the game and the learning context to enhance the educational impact. It points out that simply playing a game like 'Was It Trouble' or 'Dragon Box' does not guarantee improved performance in related tests unless the connection between the game and the learning material is clearly established. The paragraph underscores the need to bridge the game experience with real-world problem-solving to maximize the game's educational value.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Game-based Learning
💡Motivation
💡Competition
💡Gamification
💡Skills
💡Concepts
💡Strategy Games
💡Preparation for Future Learning
💡Connections
💡Dragon Box
💡Explicit Connections
Highlights
Games can enhance learning through three distinct ways and a key principle that applies to all types of games.
The first way games aid learning is by making educational activities more fun, as demonstrated by classroom apps like Kahoot.
Games can motivate students by incorporating points, leaderboards, and badges to traditional tasks, increasing engagement.
The app 'Math Jump' gamifies arithmetic problem-solving by adding a character that 'dies' if problems are answered incorrectly, making learning more engaging.
The game 'Was It Trouble' teaches linear equations in a fun way by casting the task in a different context, making the learning process enjoyable.
Games can directly teach concepts or skills, as opposed to just making activities fun, with examples including strategy games like Go and Chess.
Every game teaches something, whether it's relevant outside the game or not, and the learning can be both conceptual and skill-based.
Games like 'Coding Ocean' are designed with learning goals in mind, making the game mechanics and learning intimately connected.
The game 'Dragon Box Numbers' uses visualizations and interactive elements to develop early numeracy skills in children.
Games can also be used as preparation for future learning experiences, priming the brain for deeper understanding of later information.
The game 'Stats Invaders' is designed to prepare students for learning about basic statistics through an engaging gameplay experience.
Commercial video games like 'Call of Duty' and 'Civilization' can be used to enhance students' understanding of related lectures on history.
Games can be categorized into gamification, which adds game-like elements to activities, and game-based learning, where the mechanics are connected to learning goals.
Making explicit connections between the game and the learning context is critical for the game to be effective in facilitating learning.
Games can leverage all three approaches of making activities fun, directly teaching concepts, and preparing for future learning.
The effectiveness of games in learning is enhanced when the connection between the game experience and real-world problem-solving is made explicit.
Highlighting the importance of bridging game experiences with external contexts to maximize the game's power in facilitating learning.
Transcripts
there's basically
three ways that games can help you learn
and there's one principle that comes up
over and over and over again for
improving
how well games teach something so we're
going to talk about those three ways and
at the end of the video i'm going to get
into this key principle that i think
applies pretty much across the
board
to games of all kinds
the first way is that games make things
more
fun
right so the first way is just to
motivate people to do something that is
going to teach them something and you
see this in the wildly popular classroom
app
called kahoot now if you're not familiar
with basically it's a
way of answering questions
and you get points for answering
questions in a classroom you might
divide the class into two groups and one
group is answering the same questions as
another group and then whichever group
answers more questions correctly they
win the game now in this kind of setup
the basic task remains the same right
students are just answering questions
that a teacher might ask anyhow just as
like a random question that you might
ask a student during a class discussion
but in this setting the students are
getting points for
answering that question correctly and so
it's the points and the kind of
competition aspect that make the
learning process more fun so people are
going to spend more time with it they're
going to be happier playing kahoot
rather than just answering questions all
by themselves it's a good app i don't
know what else to say about it but
adding points and leaderboards and
badges
this isn't the only way to make
something more fun let's look at another
app real quick this is an app that i
downloaded a little while ago it's
called math jump it's not a very
sophisticated app basically the idea is
that you solve arithmetic problems
quickly and correctly
or your character
dies
so you have a little character it's
running along these different paths and
then as long as you keep solving
problems it'll jump at the right time if
you're just solving equations on a piece
of paper people find that boring but if
you're watching this little character
you know jump and where you you have
some responsibility to this character to
keep it alive
you're you're kind of adding this
gamifying element to make it more fun
but there's another example and maybe a
better example of this approach is a
game called was it trouble it's also a
math learning game and basically the
idea is that you are trying to free
these little cute animals called wazits
from their
prison i guess they've been imprisoned
somehow and
to do this you have to solve these
little puzzles that involve different
kinds of gears you've got some game
elements here that are similar to points
which
are the gems and i think the stars that
you get from solving problems correctly
but then you're also freeing these
little characters so there's a little
bit of a storyline
but they've added another element to
make it fun as well which is the
cast of the problem they've recast the
task into something different was it
trouble focuses on teaching linear
equations and solving linear equations
and actually that is what students do
they solve linear equations in the app
but they might not even realize they're
solving linear equations because it's
presented in a very different way
than
they would be presented in a classroom
context more on was it trouble
a little bit later so first way first
way the games help they can make things
more fun
interesting but not earth-shattering now
the second way is that games can
directly teach
concepts or skills there's a few
different ways of doing this so i want
to walk through some examples so that
you can see how different games
accomplish this but before we get to
that it's important to recognize that
every game teaches you something and
that includes both concepts
and skills for instance when we play
mario we get better at things like
jumping at the right time and avoiding
enemies at collecting coins right these
are all skills that mario players will
get better at over time and we also gain
knowledge from playing mario
what do these different kinds of
mushrooms do or mean how does a red
shell turtle differ from a green
shell turtle the bigger question isn't
whether we're learning something but
it's what
we are learning if you spend 100 hours
playing mario you're going to get pretty
darn good at playing mario and jumping
at the right time and collecting all the
coins and finding the secret levels and
all these things
but
all those skills and that knowledge that
you gain from playing mario is not
necessarily going to be relevant outside
of the mario
game so
if the skills that you learn are not
relevant outside of the game then
usually that's not the kind of learning
that we're interested in when we're
talking about game-based learning we're
usually talking about a game that is
helping us learn a skill that is outside
of the game itself let's look at some
examples strategy games like go and
chess have been used for a long time to
think about
strategic thinking outside of those
games so for instance there is a proverb
in go that says
attack from strength so if you attack
with a weak group that's a bad thing
because you're liable to get
counter-attacked very easily or the idea
that you need to take more risks when
you are behind
you might learn that in a game but then
apply that to a military setting or
maybe a business setting or something
like this with strategy games and some
other games what we're thinking about is
kind of
using the game as an analogy
for some other
uh domain that we're interested in but
let's look at another example here in
world war ii the us military developed
these uh airplane spotter cards for
civilian volunteers as people played
their normal card games as people played
poker or spades or hearts or whatever
they would be using cards that had axis
planes and ally planes on them so that
you know if i don't know some german
plane came flying over the american
countryside uh they would they would be
able to recognize that plane and report
that plane to the military or the
government in this kind of scenario in
this kind of setting the game mechanics
don't really have anything to do with
the learning you're just going to play
the game that you play
and you know the learning the supposed
learning that's going on here which is
you getting familiar with different
airplanes and air types that's kind of
just tacked on to the side with a
strategy game like chess you invent the
game and then it's up to the players to
figure out how to apply principles of
the game outside of chess with the plane
spotter cards the learning is bolted on
after the fact it's kind of just a
little addendum to help people learn
something while they're playing the game
but there is another whole way of
designing games for learning and that is
to think about the learning goal first
and then design the game
around that learning goal so that the
mechanics of the game the actual
decisions that you
make and the moves that you play as you
play the game those are
also learning events like the game and
the learning are intimately connected
this game for instance it's called
coding ocean
and it is it is a game designed to teach
students
how to program they have a little
map here you have a little ship these
cards are commands
for your ship to go and so basically you
have to solve these little problems
where you lay out cards
uh to direct your ship to go to certain
things or accomplish certain tasks find
treasure avoid whirlpools and this kind
of thing as the levels increase the game
introduces things like conditions and
loops
and
uh recursion in essence the students are
writing programs
as they play the game so this is an
example of a game where the mechanics
and learning goals are kind of
intimately
connected another example is a game like
dragon box the specific game that i'm
talking about here is called dragon box
numbers but they have a whole suite of
different games for uh teaching math to
young kids and the idea here is to get
students familiar with numbers and and
kind of develop early numeracy in kids
to do this they've built visualizations
of the numbers with like sounds and
these little monsters and students have
to do various manipulations and build
shapes with it they get money which they
have to spend and of course the money is
another reference numerical
representation and so students get
better at say paying for the things with
the money they develop and so
the whole idea behind
the dragon box suite of games is that
the learning goal comes first they
decide on what the learning goal is and
then they develop mechanics around that
game i have to take a little bit of an
aside here because a lot of researchers
and developers they use the terms
gamification and game based learning in
uh two different ways so gamification is
kind of like the games i was talking
about in the first part of this video
kahoot for example is an example of
gamification game based learning is more
like these examples that i'm talking
about now where the game mechanics are
intimately connected to the learning
goals and they are developed around
those learning goals so uh coding ocean
that i just mentioned and
dragon box
the other one that i just mentioned
literally 30 seconds ago so if you ever
run into someone that's like that's not
game based learning that's gamification
you know now you you know why they're
saying that but there's another way that
games can help you learn which i haven't
even gotten to yet and that is that
games can prepare
students for future learning what i mean
by that is that the game doesn't really
directly teach you anything but what
happens is that
to to use a metaphor here
the game
kills the field or plows the field of
the brain so that later on when you do
get that lecture or that information or
you read that chapter you understand
more deeply of what's uh what's
happening because you're kind of prepped
you're prepared to understand that
information so let's look at a few
examples of this approach this is space
invaders which is an old game that i
played for many hours
as a kid
and this is a screenshot from stats
invaders now stats invaders is basically
inspired by space invaders but it was
designed as a preparation for future
learning experience so the way it works
is that alien ships drop down from the
top of the screen and you're on the
bottom of the screen you're trying to
like
you you're trying to uh
destroy these alien ships because i i
think the aliens are trying to destroy
you i don't think they're friendly
aliens and in the game you have to
decide what distribution
matches the way that the aliens have
been coming down so if a bunch of aliens
are just coming down like straight down
straight down all the time and only a
few are coming in on the side maybe
that's a normal distribution or if you
have a binomial distribution that's the
one with two humps on the side
maybe you get a lot of aliens coming
down here but not as many on the outside
this game
is not really meant to teach something
on its own but what it's meant to do is
be paired with instruction
on basic statistics so uh mean standard
deviation uh different kinds of
distributions and the research on this
shows that yeah hey this game does help
it does
get students more familiar with the
basic concepts so that when they do read
more about standard deviation or listen
to a lecture on standard deviation they
get a lot more out of that lecture so
there's a researcher who basically did a
whole dissertation on how to use
commercial video games as preparation
for future learning experiences the
games that he used were call of duty and
civilization the basic idea was the same
as stats invaders you have students play
these games initially
for a number of hours and then they hear
a lecture on the material so they play
call of duty which has to do with world
war ii and then they
hear a lecture on certain certain
aspects of world war ii or maybe world
war ii battles the students here they
don't get anything out of playing the
game directly if you give them a test on
the history of world war ii after they
played the
uh call of duty they're not gonna
magically know stuff about world war ii
what happens is that a group of students
who plays call of duty first before
getting that lecture they end up getting
a lot more out of that lecture than a
group of students who has not had that
preparatory experience beforehand i have
an old video about preparation for
future learning i'll put that in a link
at the top of the video and i'll also
put that in a link in the description
before we get to this key principle that
i referenced in the beginning i want to
be clear that uh it's not like a single
game falls into one of these categories
a game can leverage all three of these
approaches for instance was it trouble
it uses gems and it uses kind of
gamified elements to make the play more
fun that's one thing it also is focused
on teaching skills and concepts and it's
it's a kind of classic game based
learning example because they had
learning goals that they started out
with and then they designed the game
around those learning goals and it could
also be used as a preparation for future
learning experience if
you know you put
the game in a classroom context and have
students play the game and then give
students more practice at solving these
linear equations there is one critical
thing
that
makes games effective for learning and
it's something that people tend to
forget about when they start to
incorporate
games into learning experiences and that
is to make explicit connections between
the game and whatever
context or whatever situation that you
want students to learn about if we had
students play was it trouble for five
hours and then we gave them a test on
linear equations they are not going to
necessarily perform that well on the
test they actually might not even know
that they've been solving linear
equations yeah but if you have students
play was it trouble and you talk
explicitly about how the game is
re-representing linear equation problems
then
you've got a recipe for
success this has happened in some of the
research on dragon box for instance
where students they've reached very very
high levels in solving algebra problems
in dragon box but
then when you actually give them say a
standard algebra test they don't do any
better than students who haven't played
the game now the problem is not that
dragon box wasn't teaching them things
it's that the students didn't make the
connection between the game experience
and the problem solving the actual
algebra problem solving the more that
you bridge the game experience with
experiences outside of the game or in
other contexts the more powerful that
game is going to be for facilitating
learning if this has helped you
understand
how games impact learning
i would really appreciate it if you
liked this video so that it could spread
to other people and if you have good
game-based learning examples
leave one in the comments i know that
there are some really amazing learning
games out there and there are also some
truly
astonishingly terrible games out there
as well for more videos like this well
you know what to do
thanks everyone
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