How Video Games Help Us Learn

How Video Games Help Us Learn

By Kevin Tecklenburg

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Abstract: School is something we all have to go through to get jobs later in life. This
article will explain why the current education system is broken for the youths of today.
This problem could be solved though the use of videogames. Videogames have the
unique ability to provide whatever the student would need to learn and to do that in their
own learning style.

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In this day and age everyone has to go to school to get an education. This is one
of the best things to increase a country's human capital. In America, students are
required to go to school from kindergarten to 12th grade or from around 6-18 years old.
Our current education system was invented in the early 1800s to help children prepare
for the jobs ahead of them, both factory work or basic shop keeping. For the most part,
we have kept to this system for the past 200 years by just adding more programs like
computer processing to keep up with current times. The system they chose is a well
rounded system that is good for most people however; to that logic it seems it would not
be perfect for anyone. If not much has changed in 200 years in our education system,
what else could be wrong or broken?
The way the school system is set up currently, the students have facts jammed
into their heads and then they regurgitate them on to a test to prove that they know the
answer. This does work; some of the students are learning some of the material
however theyre not having a full understanding of what they need to learn. Another part
of the education system that needs to change is the way failure is viewed. The current
system teaches students to fear failure so that they are more worried about being wrong
than seeing failure as a way to improve. Homework is the best example of this. The way
it currently works is homework gets assigned to the students, they bring it home, they
do it, and then they turn it in. Weeks later they get it back and there is no time correct
things or redo it because theyre moving on to the next subject. They hope they got it
right on the first try or all they get is no understanding of the material and a bad grade.
The largest problem of our failing education system is that teachers will never have

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enough time for every student's individual needs, to educate them fully so the students
can flush out all their ideas and creative solutions. One way to solve this problem is to
use video game principles teach our youth. Video games have the ability to be
whatever they need to be. They can reach vast audiences by their ability to become
different learning tools made for different types of learners and to teach many topics
within a certain learning type. (Halverson R, 6)
Video games have been part of American culture for the better part of thirty
years. Throughout this time, video games have evolved and transformed with the
changing technology and the players constant demand for better and better games. In
the last few years, video games have made a big leap. Video games are now being
considered art. This is a rising change about how people view games. Video games are
now viewed as more than mind numbing entertainment. Some believe that videogames
are an underutilized resource that we could use to change the world. Video games have
so much potential to change every part of our lives because they can become anything
they need to be. Video games just need to be molded into whatever is needed. Video
games are so integrated into the lives of the public they would be an easily accept as a
new educational platform.
Over half the population (67%) plays video games on a regular basis, an average
of 8 hours a week (ESRB). Almost everyone has played a video game at one point or
another. In the past thirty years games have evolved into richer experiences and more
developed stories that the player crafts to how they want to play and games get more
beautiful with better and better graphic all the time. In the mainstream media

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videogames are just little fun time wasters, numbing the minds of the youth while
making them aggressive loners. In reality video games are molding our youth to
become lifelong engaged learners. By the time people reach 21 years old they will play
about 10,000 hours of video games. They do this because they want to they keep going
back for more and thats what could be amazing to do in schools. (Prensky M, 2). Video
games have been a part of American culture for 30 years. The term video games has
changed a lot like the games themselves. Video games used to be all big arcade
machines with high scores and all the player needed to play was a quarter. But in recent
days, not all video games are video games in the way they were described back in the
80s. Some of them are social experiences and show the player a different way of
looking at how choices impact their lives (such as Staleys Parable or Dust). These
would not be considered games but interactive experiences but for the purpose of this
article were still going to call any game mentioned a video game.
If the public stops viewing video games as just entertainment they could see
what true potential they have. Some the core concepts of games not only engage the
player, they pull the player in wanting more. Video games show the player how to learn
and then let the player learn it on their own with some help if they need it. To truly have
people understand what is going on in games, they need to understand each step a
game takes to engage the player. The engagement starts before the game begins
because the player had to choose to pick up and play the game; therefore the act of
play is voluntary. Education is not voluntary but part making education voluntary could
be doing outside the class research. Video games could make getting more information

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about the topic of study more appealing. Play is nature's way to teaching children
different things from wrestling with their brothers and sisters teaching them to fight or a
child playing a little video game on a computer or tablet learning how the technology
driven world works.
When the player first starts playing a video game depending on their experience
with videogames and what kind of video game it is, they will either start playing and they
will learn on the fly as they go. Or, read the instructions figuring out what does what and
how to approach the video game though a tutorial or talking to a more experienced
friend or looking at video on the internet. When the player is thrown into the first level (I
will be using MegaMan X as my example) the background loads in and then your
character the player flashes down onto the screen. At this point the player will try out the
buttons seeing what does what but also at this point the game is giving the player the
illusion of choice and thats why it is fun, this is called agency. Agency is the capacity of
individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. If the player tries to
go left in the game, they hit an invisible barrier so they just go right and they encounter
their first enemies learning the basic move-shoot and charge-shoot. Through the first
couple waves of baddies or enemies, they just go right through them but the level
progresses they find new and harder types of enemies. This is the game testing the
player for the first time throwing them into a new problem seeing if they can solve it. If
they can, they move on if they cant they die and restart earlier in the level to sharpen
those basic skills that they need to complete the game. After the player gets to the end
of the level they meet the final boss for the first time and no matter what they do he will

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beat them in the end leaving another chapter to save them, then Zero says that with
more power and practice they will be able to take him on and defeat the boss. Heading
on to the next level where the player will learn a new skill. Then the game tests them on
that skill then the game makes them apply the new skill to the basics that they already
learned. The game keeps doing this over and over making better and better as they go
until all they have left is the final level. Where the game puts all the skills that they have
learned so far and put them together and pushes the player as hard as it can at the final
boss. In games, they give players a new skill they learn it then learn a new skill and then
apply it to the old skill compounding learning.
Most jobs decent jobs to take some innovation to solve problems that people
would have never thought of and to quickly come up with a solution. Video games are
already teaching us to do all these things by throwing all kinds of new challenges at us
with every new game. The way video games benefit students is that they give the
student a tool for finding they way they learn and sticking with that through their school
years to get the best possible education they could possibly get. The way video games
benefit teachers is that the teacher is freed from lecturing and can actually teach one on
one for exactly what the child needs. Dont expect teachers to come up with personally
tailored assignments for every student but a video game could. Video games are
already taking so many statistics while there playing from where, when, and how much
they clicked or how long they waited to take a jump. Which could be changed to give the
teacher lots of information on the students activities and what exact areas they need
more understanding with. So a game could look at childs performance and see how

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well they did at some things and not so much at others. The game would give the child
more time on subjects the child is struggling with while also notifying the teacher if the
student needs more than what the video game could give to them. Video games give
those instantaneous results no waiting to see how they did on a homework assessment.
The students know just as they finish the assignment how they did and then they either
try another one or move on, teaching them not to fear failure but to see it as a learning
opportunity to learn to overcome what they fear.
There are many people talking on this subject but one of the leaders in the
change of putting video games in schools and how video games actually help the
students is James Paul Gee author of Good Games and Good Learning. In his article,
he talks about how he was watching his six year old son play Pajama Sam, a point
and click adventure game teaching children about not being afraid of the dark. He was
amazed on the ways this game was teaching his son and wondered if this was a kids
video game, what he could learn from video games made for adults. He goes on about
games like Civilization 3 which is a hard game for adults. Next, Gee heads into his main
points of the 16 Learning Principles. These principles are the core functions of video
games that promote good learning and how they keep things interesting.
1. Identity - For real learning that sticks with the learner, the learner has to be
personally invested in what the learner is doing. Good video games have a strong
developed main character to intrigue the player on what is happening and what they are
doing.

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2. Interaction - Other types of media such as books and movies and music are
passive mediums where videogames are not. Great games take the fact that the player
is as much a part of the game as any of the charters in the game are because without
the player the game doesnt work theres no point.
3. Production- The player is not just a consumer they don't just consume the
game they are also a producer of it. The player is an active part of the game, the player
is part of it deciding what and when to do actions or missions without the player, this
would not work.
4. Risk Taking- There are lower consequences while in a video game causing the
player to stray from what is familiar and easy and try what is new and difficult. This lets
a player charge into a boss head first, even though he is unprepared and unaware of
what comes next.
5. Customization- Almost all video games have some way the player can tailor
the experience to the way they like it. From just changing the difficulty to what skills their
player has to completely changing the look to the player. This lets the player try out new
things, ideas, or challenge them and this is another way to engage and have the player
invest into the video game.
6. Agency- Where in schools, the students are just told what needs to be done
and the student just has to do the work so the student has no agency. In games, the
player has all the control. The player dictates where and what the charter does, and
when they do it.

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7. Well-Ordered Problems- In video games, these are just skills or a solution to a

problem that worked in the past and just adding the new variables to the problem. While
in free roaming (or an open area for the player to openly explore) the player will come at
a certain problem from many angles and come up with creative solutions, there is no
guarantee of compounding knowledge. This is why most video games use well ordered
problems to help the player advance.
8. Challenge and Consolidation- In video games, this is a way of teaching the
player by giving them a problem and giving it to them in different ways over and over
until the solution becomes automatic. Then, changing the problem, so the player has to
take the old master problem and add it with a new one creating fast problem solving for
the player to build off of.
9. Just-in-Time and On Demand- People have trouble using lots of text out of
context whereas in video games the player only has access to the information they
need when they need it or whenever they want it. Also, this information is always
enough to tell them what they need and nothing more.
10. Situated Meanings- people have trouble with understanding the definitions of
words in contexts to definition. Such as reading a definition of a word in a book and
seeing it in an article later in the day most people will have to look up the definition more
than once we have trouble holding on information that isn't connected to anything.
Whereas in video games the player attaches these decisions to actions or objects and
when they need to know that definition the video game shows them that action or
object.

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11. Pleasantly Frustrating - A good game will get this perfectly by making the
game challenging, not so challenging that the player wants to quit, but makes them
keep going over and over again to get the desired end result. Reward without challenge
is not a reward, but just a gift.
12. System Thinking- Video games force the player not just to asses and analyze
a single event but asses and analyze the relationship between all the events letting the
player see the game in macro and micro.
13. Explore, Think Laterally, Rethink Goals- While in school, the students are
taught to run on the straightest and fastest path towards their goal. While games teach
them to slow down and approach it from every angle so that they may find an answer
but it was not the same goal that the player stated with. Video games teach them to
adapt at any point of the problems solution.
14. Smart Tools and Distributed Knowledge- The video games charter is a tool
that the player will control. The tool has pre-programmed knowledge that the player will
not know to start the game but will learn though what the charter does. After lots of hard
work and training with charter, the player will master them, then he will spread this
knowledge to others playing the game.
15. Cross-Functional Teams- In massively online multiplayer games or MMOs,
the higher level raids cannot be completed by the players alone so many players team
up. All the players will have different roles from healer, to tank and damage, to many
more. The player must understand all the roles and how they work together to complete
their objective.

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16. Performance before Competence- Video games work in the opposite way
that schools do this way by letting the player perform the challenge or act before they
have to become competent at it, giving them training wheels and slowly taking them off
to let the player master it.
All these principles are present in almost all great video games which is why
video games are one of the future mediums of education. These principles could help
keep students interested in topics in school while engaging them pushing them to find
more information about the current topics in the classroom. There have been many
classes that have tried using video games like Civilization III, Age of Empires, and Rise
of Nations to teach history by experiencing it through the game. Some studies that have
used these games such Rise of Nations as Halverson R. What can K-12 School
Leaders Learn from Video Games and Gaming? Halverson uses Rise of Nations as a
tool to let the children learn and experience the strategy of war while experiencing and
learning the history actively. In the game the players have to balance between
resources going to their cities and armies how much research they can do and how to
get along and trade with some nations and which ones they have to conquer. This way
teaches the children about the politics of running a country and lets them better
understand the mistakes of the past to make them better at the game. The children are
encouraged to learn to make them better so they will seek out the information on their
own and not having it forced down their throats, they find the information voluntarily.
Other studies have taken place with similar results in Squire K.s Changing the Game:
What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom? and also his Video Games

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in Education along with many more examples finding that video games are wonderful
teaching tools not only for those struggling but those doing well too. Showing that video
games make students not only perform better on tests, but also have a better
understanding of the concepts of most of the questions.(Barab S, Scott B,Siyahhan
S,Goldstone R, Ingram-Goble A, Zuiker S and Warren S, 315)
With all the evidence that video games could be a better learning tool then our
current ones, there has not been a large scale change in the education system. With the
abundance of information there has been virtually no change to the education system.
For example, in 1981, there was an article published about how computers were helping
8th graders learn math in half a year. Skinner did an experiment in Roanoke, Virginia to
try his idea out. The students in the experiment remembered more than usual and then
the experiment ended and no one did anything with it, this experiment was done back in
the 60s but was not published until 1981. (Skinner B. F, 947-948) There was another
study done in 1998, having a classroom split in two. One was taught history the way it is
currently done and the other was using Civilization III to teach. (Squire K., 2) The results
of the study were that the students that were more hands-on learners and struggling in
school, were more drawn and interested in activity and learned more from it. The article
concluded that videogames are not a silver bullet (Squire K, 8 ) and to change the
structure of the way we educate, by teaching how to be a lifelong learner rather than
how to score good on tests. This article goes on listing five things that could bring about
this change.

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1) Organizing curricula around driving questions of personal relevance to

students and open-ended, genuine intellectual merit, such as "what causes contribute to
the long and short term fates of civilizations?"
2) Opportunities for different students with different interests, abilities, and
capacities to learn different topics, at different rates, and through different media, such
as books, games, and film.
3) School days and curricula not organized by the Carnegie unit but by rather
students', parents', and teachers' goals for the student so that a student interested in
history could study a topic at intervals different than "45 minutes per day, every day, and
every alternating semester" (which was my experience in high school).
4) Not limiting the learning experiences in the classroom to the media that
administrators or teachers find useful (i.e., books and film). In short, a teenage student
who plays Civilization outside of school ought to be able to integrate this into his or her
formal learning of social studies through building simulations or some similar activity.
5) Treating assessments primarily as opportunities to support learning as
opposed to evaluative structures that function largely to support social reproduction.
(Squire K, 8)
All articles show how the current system needs to change, to be able to teach the
youth of today for their jobs in the future. Articles like these are published and usually
passed off or talked about for some time, but not much is ever done to change things for
the better. Even though the students in these articles are not just regurgitating facts but
actively problem solving coming up with new ideas and creative solutions, these studies

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seem to be working. The current education system has to change. This is a fact not one
that most people like, but it is. When a student in high school says Every time I go to
school I power down (Prensky M, 3), its time to come up with a new system because
this is not a rare occurrence with the few geniuses but with most students of average
intelligence. The reason why that average student is more knowable now than 40, 80,
and 200 years ago is because they have more information available through the
internet. Students can access this information instantly from almost anywhere. The
reason why schools had students memorize and regurgitate information is because
back when our school system was invented it was the only way to access information.
The youth of today need a new way to learn and not just the most well rounded
system that works for most, it needs to be a modular system that caters to all the
different ways children learn. In this way, some students would graduate early, and
taking more classes than others in college. The main point is to make many different
ways to learn so that the student becomes active and excited about learning instead of
just making the grade. This will cause the student to truly and fully understand all the
concepts they need to know.
For those that say that this is not possible, that it will be too expensive and time
consuming, they are right on both counts but this kind of process may take many years
the end results will be immense by improving Americas human capital by ten times by
making future generations that seek out learning at its core to answer all the questions
they could possibly have to reach for the stars to create and discover new things that
just dreams or fiction. 30 years ago Steve Jobs said that youll never need a hard drive

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bigger than 500 MB and now everyone can get a 1GB portable stick for a couple
dollars, and we carry super-computers in our pockets that would barely fit in whole
rooms 30 years ago. Games started with rock and paper, progressed to cardboard, and
now they are run on computer networks letting millions play at the same time in the
same game, all working towards a single goal to be challenged and have fun while
doing it.
Gamers are large parts of our society today of 60% of households have some
sort of gaming platform. The national average of play time is 8 hours a week and add
that up over the next 12 years, thats about 5,000 hours of playtime (ESRB.org). Most
gamers will hit well over this number well before they finish high school and they will hit
that magic number of 10,000 hours of play which they would be considered masters at
games. If most of the population is already becoming masters at games, why not use
them in schools to make learning easier and more enjoyable so that students will learn
better and faster. Video games are at their core teaching tools everyone just has to
decide what they want the player to learn from the game and find a way to lead the
player to skills or information that they need to know. Video game have the unique
process of letting the player either explore or set them on an exact track of what they
need to know by using focused goals, challenging tasks, clear and compelling
standards, protection from adverse consequences for initial failures, affirmation of
performance, affiliation with others, novelty and variety, choice, and authenticity.
(Dickey M, 70)

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These principles are at the core of most games and are why they are such great
learning tools. Video games have the effect on the brain then the current school system
has. Its a complete and absolute concentration and focus to the point where some
gamers will let hours and hours go by without even noticing because they are so
focused that nothing can break that concentration, if we could harness that power for
learning we could reach new heights of learning and education.(Griffiths M, 49) An
example of games used in a learning environment in study in the article
Transformational play as a curricular scaffold: Using videogames to support science
education where they teach a science class on how to collect water sample and see
the levels of pollutants in the water using a traditional class or a 3D game to teaching.
Throughout the class, the students that used the game not only scored higher on the
tests and quizzes, they also demonstrated a deeper understanding of the concepts and
were quicker to figure out what to do in the field because they had made the character
in the do the process and worked from there. (Sasha A. Barab, Brianna Scott, Sinem
Goble, Steven J. Zuiker and Scott Warren, 315-319) The reason for this is all the current
generations and beyond are digital natives. This means they were born around
technology and the internet and grew up with it making them vastly different learners
that previous learners. (Prensky M, 2) Ten ways digital natives are different are as
follows.
1. Twitch speed versus conventional speed.
a. In the ever changing world, it has never changed faster than it does now.
Also digital natives grow up with keyboards, mice, and controllers so they

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develop the skills at younger age, adapting how they use them faster
letting them adopt to changes faster.
2. Parallel processing versus linear processing.
a. Young people are better multi-takers because they find in this fast track
digital world they have to keep up with everything from talking with people
to reading a computer monitor while listening. They are using multiple
brain processes to do this. The brain is a multi process machine meant to
take on heavy loads of data because, in this day and age we get used to
it.
3. Random access versus linear thinking.
a. A student will wiz through a website quickly scanning and clicking on a
new link to bring up a new page and continuing to do so until they find
what they need. It may look random and like theyre not absorbing the
information but really, they are. They take the bits and pieces they need
and file them away in their head while making new leaps to the next step
to find what theyre looking for.
4. Graphics first versus text first.
a. Back in the day, text would be accompanied by an image or graphic to add
to the experience. In current times, the roles are reversed. Graphics have
come so far, younger generations can rely more heavily on graphics to tell
a native and set a scene than the text ever could by letting text just add to
what's going on, on the screen.

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5. Connected versus stand alone.

a. Gamer and digital natives are connected with each other 24/7, 365
through the internet, games, and many other services. Now back in the
day, going off to college could be a culture shock because of being
introduced to many new things and people. In current times, people are
constantly connected with people from all walks of life, faith, and culture
so they become more tolerant to other people and cultures.
6. Active versus passive.
a. The older generation will read a manual to a new piece of software or
hardware while the younger generation will do things by trial and error
first. All software and hardware is meant to just be picked up and they
should mostly know or be able to figure out how to use it. It is like this in
video games as well, when the player enters a boss room or are facing a
challenging enemy the player will just charge in headstrong to see what it
is made out of then formulate a strategy around it, the first attempt usually
fails.
7. Payoff versus patience.
a. Video games make this point the best by giving the player constant
feedback in the game through levels or experience points so that they
know the hours and hours of work they put into the game will be rewarded.
While in life, it quite the opposite, students are constantly being told what
they're doing will pay off in the end years and years down the road and

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that is hard to motivate people that way. This will solve the problem
entirely by just by adding little rewards along the way will help the process.
8. Fantasy versus reality.
a. Video game facilitates this by letting the player explore endless
possibilities and meet new people try new things where real life can be
rather dull. Games can be used as an escape to free them, and a way to
relax. This way the gamer is learning passively without their knowledge,
the video game is teaching the player the basis to form more developed
learning which is active and requires the players full attention.
9. Play versus work.
a. Gamers are seen as lazy people to the masses and this is simply not the
case video games are hard work, hard work we want to do but still hard
work. Video games are complex things from puzzles, logic challenges,
long tasks, or developing relationships between characters. Games are
work while being fun and voluntary which makes people want to play
them. Some gamers say that games help them work around a problem
they have been stuck on at work among many other things.
10. Technology as a friend versus technology as a foe.
a. The younger generation has grown up constantly having technology in
their hand and having it be everywhere they go so naturally they form an
attachment with it and learn to truly harness it power rather to fear it and
for it to only be used as a tool. (Prensky M, 3-5)

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These ten example show why digital natives have a different view on the world
around them and how they go about their lives and a big factor in most youths today is
video games they might not play them all the time but most of them can navigate and
understand a video game within a few minutes of play.
It is time to change the way we educate people for the future. Video games are one of
our best options shown by a study done on a college campus, asking about what they
were feeling before during or after playing video games and to see what positive or
negative benefits could be found. (Hoffman B & Nadelson L, 258-261) Most games
have more effects through relaxing the player letting them open their mind to new
possibilities and working around problems in a new way. Video games have another
benefit that most people don't even realize, it is literacy because players don't even
realize that their learning it before the players has already learned it. (Gumulak S &
Webber S, 248) Video games are sneaky like that, teaching the player things without
the player noticing. Going through a new level, trying what they just discovered or
picking up on the strange language in the game over time, these things will become
natural and the player will have learned them without even trying.
When a student goes to school to learn, they are forced to learn the way the
school wants. It is not choice or by their own will so students are not motivated to put
forth much effort. While in a video games, when playing with their friends even though
they might not like the game, you are still motivated to play through experience points
and getting better than your friends to show off your skills. (Gee, 2) Schools need to
have a more playful atmosphere to relax the student instead of stressing them out. Also,

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the way schools are taught is that the student has almost no responsibilities towards
what they are learning they are just required to show up and do work while at school.
Most students can get all their work done in school not doing anything after they leave
school because they don't have the responsibility to or the motivation to. (Hwang Y, 3)
Giving students more responsibility would motivate them to learn outside the classroom,
to go beyond the lecture to look deeper and learn something new.
When the student can pass a class just by showing up to harder class such as
math, chemistry, or physics; some of these students will skip classes that are easier for
them like a second language that they mostly know or in this current age computer
classes are far too easy for most students that could complete all the coursework on the
first day of class. These students are skipping class out of boredom rather than
laziness. (Fallis K & Opotow S, 108) This is why the education system needs to change
students are skipping just because their classes were so boring and uninteresting and
the reason most students are bored is because the classes are too easy or they can't
relate to the class.
In conclusion, we are going to have a growing problem with the current school
system in the coming years if we don't change anything about how we teach our
students and realize how differently they learn. By implementing a modular system so
that a student could work with they own learning styles, they could learn better and
more effectively. Video games are one way to solve this problem because they are
already teaching the player how to play the game and how to get better at it they just
have to change the game to teach the player things they need to know in school. We

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also need to take a hard look at what is taught in this new digital information era, we are
in it less important to memorize information and more important to focus on engaging
the learner to branch off on their own to explore and dive deeper into the topic to make
better lifelong learners.

References:
1. www.ESRB.org
2. www.extra-credits.net
3. Fallis, R., & Opotow, S. (2003). Are Students Failing School or Are Schools
Failing Students? Class Cutting in High School. Journal of Social Issues, 59(1),
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7. Squire K. (2003) Video games in education, Comparative media studies

Cambridge

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8. Prensky M. (2003) Digital game-based learning, ACM Computers in

Entertainment, Vol. 1, No. 1, Book 02
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Appendix:
1. Whats it like to be a video game designer?
2. How far did you go in you education?
3. How hard was school at any level k-college?
4. Has the idea of making the curriculum of education in an interactive game to help
students like you that had some trouble in high school?
5. What do you think the best way this could be implemented?
6. How is it going to work like a game?
7. Do you think this could really work in the future?
8. Where do you see the game industry heading in the next ten years?

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9. What is the hardest part of game design?

10. What would you say to anyone trying to get into the game industry?
11. What kind of reading do you do for your job?
12. What kind of writing do you do for your job?