Horizon2007:Shortlist 3b
From Horizon Project
Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years
Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming
The interest and trend of educational gaming has accelerated considerably in the last year. Discussion and research has continued, identifying games that are goal-oriented and those that are more social in nature; games that are easy to construct and play, and those that are more complex and time-consuming; and games developed expressly for education versus commercial games that are appropriated for educational use. We see the topic twice in this report, with virtual worlds recognized as a category in its own right. Virtual worlds are inherently more generalizable than the things we traditionally include in the category of “games,” and that category is clearly moving faster than many of the various aspects of pure gaming, especially massively multiplayer games.
Massively multiplayer online (MMO) educational gaming differs from virtual worlds in several way, but the most significant is that MMOs are typically very goal-oriented and thus less generalizable. Even setting aside issues of cost, creating a compelling MMO is a challenging enterprise because of complexity involved in developing a really engaging game of this genre. As a result, although interest remains high and experimentation and research continue, this category of games lags other forms of educational gaming. This is not to say that gaming in education hasn’t arrived, however. Educational games of other types have continued to grow in popularity and are increasingly used in teaching and learning today. Cost will become less of a factor as open-source MMO gaming engines are further developed, and within a few years it is likely that educational MMO games will be commonplace in a variety of disciplines.
Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression
- Games are engaging and their value for learning has been established through research.
- Increasingly, we know more about how games work and how to apply them to teaching and learning.
- Games offer opportunities for both discovery-based and goal-oriented learning, and can be very effective ways to develop team-building skills.
Examples
- Thinking Worlds is an educational games authoring engine and a community of user-developers; games can be shared within the community: http://www.thinkingworlds.com/
- A professor at Indiana University has received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to develop an MMO about the life of Shakespeare: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/3599.html
- Indiana University is investigating the potential of MMOs in a big way: http://swi.indiana.edu/
For Further Reading
Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless (Richard Van Eck, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2, March/April 2006: 16–30). This article discusses why digital game-based learning is effective and engaging and outlines educational applications. http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0620.asp
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the new media classroom (Aaron Delwiche, Educational Technology & Society, 9 (3), 2006: 160-172). This paper reports findings from two MMO-based courses in the context of situated learning theory. http://www.ifets.info/journals/9_3/14.pdf
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Discussion
Add your thoughts, suggestions, examples to add here, and indicate who wrote it-- e.g. [Alan]
I agree with everything except the word "Education" in the title. I think we easily confuse participating in entertainment with participation in education.... well they both start with 'e'. [Tom Z]
