Engaging with Games: Game-Based Learning as an Everyday Approach

Was it “Chutes and Ladders”?  “Battleship”, perhaps?   How about “Chess” or “Uno”?  Everyone had a favorite game growing up.  What was yours?  Maybe “Super Mario Brothers”?  Go ahead, take a minute and think about it.  Name that game you spent hours on, strategizing about, and maybe even cajoling others to play with you.  Got it?  Great!  I knew you had one.

For many children, adolescents, and even teachers, playing a game, especially a videogame, is a preferred pastime.  Something about a game keeps players engaged as they try over and over again to accomplish a skill, complete a task, or advance to a next level.  The challenge can be all-consuming as players spend considerable amounts of time gaming, even seeming to lose consciousness of the world outside the game.  Why do games merit such attention?  It may be because games meet students in Lev Vygotsky's (1978) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).  The difference between what a learner can do without help and what he/she can do with help, the ZPD exists between what is known and unknown, where classroom teachers attempt to meet their students with new knowledge, and new learning occurs. It is the instructional sweet spot.
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Games intuitively capture a player’s attention at his/her ZPD, as initial rounds capitalize on a player’s prior abilities and skills, and each additional level forces him/her to learn a new skill or acquire new knowledge to be successful.  Despite the glazed-over eyes and tears of frustration that can accompany a string of losses, the player returns again and again, each time with a little more understanding of the key to mastery.  

But how is it that games feed a player’s engagement despite multiple unsuccessful attempts?  Bruner Wood (1976) expanded on Vygotsky's work to suggest that supports, or scaffolding, within the ZPD can be removed as soon as skills become automatic.  Wood referred to scaffolds as, “Those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner’s capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence” (1976, p.90). One element of successful learning is the ability of the teacher to engage students in the content long enough to provide the scaffolds and supports needed for students to succeed in the ZPD.  

To achieve engagement, games captivate players emotionally, enticing them with the quest to be played.  Game designers hone in on a player’s desire to succeed or win by building the sense the player can triumph through fair play.  This embedded emotional element mesmerizes players and leads to deep engagement and the acquisition of skills and content, and tickles the player’s intrinsic desire to succeed.   The strong emotional connections of games further enhance a sense of engagement with their task.  Fear, surprise, disgust, pride, triumph, and wonder all act as engagement keys for game play (Farber, 2015).  “Designers can customise an experience best suited to unlock certain feelings” (Farber, 2015, p.60), making even stronger connections to the game and creating a commitment by the player to continue.  

Both Vygotsky and Wood describe recognizable parallels to players that self-select games in their ZPD.  Gamers learn rules using peers as supports, play, and soon--without help--experience gratification as they play, and even lose.  As players develop, they select games requiring a variety of skills or, as skills become automatic, games that are more challenging.  Games players find too easy or too hard lie outside the ZPD and lack the keys to engagement, causing players to become passive or give up.  Ralph Koster, author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design, points out, “The definition of a good game is therefore one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing” (2013, p.46).  Koster asserts both the educational and entertainment value of games by writing, “Basically, all games are edutainment” (2013, p.47).

Games, almost in any form, are so good at engagement, maintaining attention, and advancing a skill that they also make terrific teaching tools and have led to the game-based learning philosophy.  “Game based learning describes an approach to teaching, where students explore relevant aspects of games in a learning context designed by teachers. Teachers and students collaborate in order to add depth and perspective to the experience of playing the game” (EdTech Team, 2013).

Through game-based learning, teachers pair the benefits of games with learning in their classrooms. Andrew Garvery, a middle-level English teacher at Randolph Central School and professed “gamer”, is one teacher using the blended game design curriculum Zulama to bring the engagement of game design to his students.  Andrew’s students are answering the questions, “What is a game?  Why do we play them?  Is a game a representation of society? How is society represented in a game?” (Garvey, 2016).  His students are not using a traditional educational games approach to master vocabulary or key components of content, rather games are the engaging content in his class.  Students in Andrew’s classroom are, by design, becoming game designers.    

Games, through many of the strategies highlighted below and built within Zulama’s curriculum, become everyday pedagogical tools in the learning process.

• Games allow students to explore the history of games, their impact on society, society’s impact on games, and various games played throughout history.  They are rich with history and have been impacted by the cultures in which they were created and played.  Students might benefit from learning the components of games (Fig. 1) from the past.  Students can then make predictions about the cultures while they are playing the game.  Those predictions can be used throughout units of study of geographical places and world cultures.  Students playing Monopoly may predict something largely financial happened during the early part of the twentieth century. Nine Man Morris, played during the early Roman Empire, or the Royal Game of Ur, one of the oldest known games, might provide windows into a time unknown to students and may be helpful in helping students connect to an unknown culture and time.
• Encourage students to dissect core components of games, game principles, and emotional design elements with students (Fig. 1).  Dissection of games may help students understand the engaging elements of games and how they can be applied to games of their own design.  Students might compare and contrast game elements  from various games and discuss why some games are more engaging than others. Students can also make connections between game elements and how they might begin to engage others through the use of games.
• Allow students to create their own games using a design process that includes player feedback and iteration of their games.  Implementing a design process that includes playtesting allows students to react to player feedback and iterate their design (Farber, 2015).  Authentic play of student created games also creates an environment of high quality student output as students build their games, and it also creates an environment of giving and receiving peer feedback.  Teachers may also ask students to use an existing game and ask students to recreate, through iteration, its design.  The process of iteration allows students to “level-up” their game and make it more appealing to future players.
• Assign students to design abstract games within content areas.  Try asking students to design a Math game using a deck of cards, a board game paralleling World War I or A Farewell to Arms, or a word game related to William Shakespeare's “King Lear”.  Crossing content and concepts from the classroom with game creation can serve as needed application and attempts to automatize information through game play.  
• Work with students to explore story elements of games as related to context, plot, and character development.  Have students write a script for a current game or use a script as the basis for creating a game.  It might also be interesting for students to write reviews of existing “storyline heavy” video games they play at home.    
• Finally, apply game design to add context to coding experiences in web and app design.  Programs like Zulama offer a rich gaming context to digitally designed games.  Using software like GameMaker to create original video games or creating 3D worlds with Unity allow students to put coding and programming skills to use in an authentic way in the classroom.  Involving students in feedback discussions and the iteration process using their original created video games yields high engagement.  Curriculum programs provide classroom teachers with instructional tools related to programming that might not be native to most educators, yet provide context for coding and programming tools used by many students.  

As these examples show, game-based learning is not simply a matter of “game-ifying” the curriculum by playing content heavy Jeopardy games, but rather challenging students to become game designers through exposure to game elements; Andrew’s students know this firsthand.   The Entertainment Software Association estimates that there were 140 million video gamers in the United States as of 2015, and many more worldwide playing video and analog games.  With this statistic in mind, schools like Randolph Central School and teachers like Andrew Garvey are searching for ways to engage with their students in ways that are relevant to their students.  And using an everyday game based learning approach, Andrew and his students do not intend to only consume games, their graphics, and their storylines, but also to create them.  
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Whether your favorite game is Monopoly, Minecraft or Mancala, when you are gaming, you are a student and learning is happening.  Almost magically, the game has placed you in your Zone of Proximal Development and, chances are, you can’t get enough, even when you’re losing.  Incorporating game-based learning strategies to instructional design can bring the magic of the game to the heart of learning in any classroom.  

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Figure 1. Valencourt, Beverly. (2014). Zulama: Game Design, Game Principles, and Emotional Design Elements. Used with permission.

REFERENCES

EdTechReview, Editorial Team. (2013, April 23). What is GBL (Game-Based Learning)? Retrieved February 25, 2016, from http://edtechreview.in/dictionary/298-what-is-game-based-learning

Entertainment Software Association. More Than 150 Million Americans Play Video Games - The Entertainment Software Association. Retrieved March 11, 2016, from http://www.theesa.com/article/150-million-americans-play-video-games/

Farber, M. (2015). Gamify your classroom: A field guide to game-based learning. NY, NY: Peter Lang.

Garvey, A. (2016, March 10). Zulama Webinar [Online interview].

Koster, R. (2013). Theory of Fun for Game Design. O'Reilly Media.
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Vaillancourt, Beverly. (2014). Zulama: Game Design, Game Principles, and Emotional Design Elements.  Used with permission.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wood, D., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry, 17, 89−100.

By:  Tim Cox, CA BOCES Instructional Support Services