Why Games?

Games are one of the oldest entertainment structures we have; we engage with games from an early age, and they are a common way of imparting learning. It seems logical to connect games to learning in educational environments. And yet, games are often seen as the antithesis to education- after all, students often want to play games instead of engage in academic content. We should recognize the incredible power that games hold and harness that power to increase student engagement.

Think back to your own education: what lesson, activity, or other learning moment do you remember vividly? Chances are it had similarity to a game: immersion, motivation, captivation, fun, excitement, etc. None of those previous adjectives are typically used to describe worksheets. Are worksheets necessary? Yes; there are times when that is the best academic tool. But other times, we can take a tip from games by embedding their structures into our classrooms, or we can use games themselves to help augment the power and impact of an academic lesson. Games also allow us to reach students on a deeply empathetic level sometimes not possible with traditional pedagogy.

Games allow students to become another person or take on a role they might have only daydreamed about and otherwise feel is unavailable to them. There is incredible power in that, and it allows our classrooms to become inclusive in a way that can be hard to do otherwise. Games give students a “free pass” to try things on, both academically and personally, that might not be as easy to do outside of a game. Giving our students a chance to expand their idea of who they are gives us more ways of reaching them and increases the feelings of safety and community in a classroom.

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Entertainment vs. Edutainment: which games to use?

Often when we envision using games, we picture the “edutainment” or “serious games” titles that we experienced in our own education, or those that are sold to us by education companies. The reality is, the vast majority of edutainment titles simply do not accomplish higher level learning tasks. Instead, they often become substitutes for worksheets, flashcards, or other basic learning tasks (please see “Assessor’s Creed” for more on this). After all, their point is to “teach,” so they have to lead with their academic content instead of embedding it further into game structures in an intrinsically integrated way (Hapgood and Ainsworth, 2011). Are there useful edutainment titles? Yes, but we must be careful to assess what the game is actually getting students to do in terms of academic tasks.

Entertainment game titles, however, must be engaging, or they simply won’t sell. Entertainment games can demand highly advanced skills of us as players because they intrinsically integrate the learning and the fun into experiences that are engrossing (Ibid.). Thus we want to play them and we learn in the process too. So, what entertainment games should we be turning to? I cover this extensively in “Assessor’s Creed” so please head to the “Talks” page to view it or reach out to me to get more details. Below I will list some examples, both of bringing gaming principles into the classroom through game structures and incorporating actual games into the classroom.

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Examples of Incorporating Games

gaming structures- Simulations

Many video games are forms of simulations; you make a decision, or you act as a passive observer, as a scenario plays out. But this is very different than passively observing it by reading about something in a history book- simulations allow students to feel like they are participating in history and it gives them agency and buy-in. It can also give students an opportunity to experience an event that they otherwise would have no way of easily connecting with.

A word here on inclusivity: please be careful with simulations. Simulations are powerful learning tools, but they should never be used to simulate trauma. Simulations should never be used to generate empathy by leveraging the trauma of students who may be in the room. If I wanted my students to understand the difficulty of being misgendered, for example, it would be traumatic to misgender them (and for trans and nonbinary students in the room), even in a simulation environment. If you want to bring out empathy in your students, a simulation can be powerful but will often be leveraging someone else’s lived experience. Please tread carefully.

Some simulations I use when teaching Social Studies are:

1. Population vs. population density: At the beginning of the year, simulations are a great way to teach demographic terms. Group students in one small region of the classroom and calculate the population; draw a border and calculate the density. Then do it again but using the entire classroom and note the demographics that change vs. those that do not.

2. The division of the Korean peninsula: After studying types of border disputes, students simulated living in one classroom and then having it arbitrarily divided along a latitudinal line. Students then had to rely solely on the “resources” available to them to complete a map of the peninsula, and described what classroom resources would represent in real life (the door to the classroom might represent open borders, for example).

3. History of Sunni and Shiite Islam: While studying religion, I found a huge gap in the coverage given to Islam in most curriculum guides. My students knew there were a wide variety of denominations of Christianity but my students had no idea these differences existed in other religions. This simulation allows students to participate in the changing interpretations of Islam after the death of the prophet Muhammad.

4. Economies simulated through paper airplanes: To understand the differences between free, emerging, command, and mixed economies, students participated in a paper airplane competition. Their resources, construction freedom, and time limits were determined by the economy their group was in. Then students compared how economic structures impacted production.

5. Impact of import and export decisions on market freedom: Students have an in-class marketplace and sell “items” (images of different items). Differences are determined by students choosing options like local vs international manufacturing, shipping times, number of employees, etc.

6. Communism as a classroom structure: Students spend 1-2 weeks in a simulation called “The Community” in which the resources are controlled by the government, rules are determined by Community leaders, which are determined by each class as a citizen group. This is an involved simulation that directly impacts the overall classroom structure even while more “traditional” instruction is going on.

7. Feudalism’s impact on the Bolshevik revolution: Students participate in a simulation of feudalism to understand why feudalism had direct impact on a transition to socialism and communism. Students take on the roles of social classes under feudalism and use that experience throughout our government unit to understand the impact of feudalism on political unrest in the Russian Empire.

8. Do you want details on the above simulations? Lesson plans? Written simulation guides? I can help! Please contact me directly if you would like more details or a written detailed guide to the above simulations.

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Incorporating Video Games