I was fortunate enough to present on Game-Based Learning at Follett’s New Leaf in Learning Conference, an annual practice that arms educators with tools and best practices to increase student engagement and achievement. Many sessions pushed the thinking of participants, but most inspiring were the key note speaking. One particular talk resonating with me and drew connections with the materials I present on Game-Based Learning.
Ian Jukes provided a “swift kick in the assumptions” to participants about the way schools operate and their evolving purpose. After many comical examples on the challenges of change, including the size of two horses assess dictating the size of the road, Jukes provide examples of disruptive innovations. Kodak going bankrupt, postal service centers closing – all are examples of disruptive innovation. “It isn’t personal,” Jukes said, it’s just what happens. In terms of education, Jukes elaborated on the way technology and other forces are causing disruptive innovation. Information is being distorted to our students in different ways, and because of that, we can no longer tinker with the “information delivery business,” that many schools still hold on to. Schools with change or die.
GBL is a paradigm shift in how information is presented to and applied by our students. Games create situated learning, where content knowledge is seamlessly pushed out, applied, and assessed. Instead of games viewing the learner as a receptacle to fill, games are created to draw learners into wrestling with content in manageable ways that are assessed and reassessed in safe ways. Games allow for trial and error in a safe space, where mistakes are overcome in an ongoing basis. In addition, games not only value content knowledge, but also 21st century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and technology literacy. GBL helps us reframe how students learn, how content is learned, and more importantly what is valued in terms of learning. GBL is critical player in disruptive innovation for education.
As much as I revere the teachings of Clayton Christensen, the progenitor of the most modern concept we have of Disruptive Innovation, I have been disappointed by his subscription to the notion that on-line learning is a viable candidate for Disruption of Education. There are many reasons for this whch I will not expand upon at this time (although I will if you ask), but I will use this opportunity to express that the idea of gamification seems far more likely to meet far more of the conditions established as core to having the potential to Disrupt the so-poorly wrought educational system that we’ve all been forced to live with and through until now.
One of the advantages of using games to learn rather than classrooms is that gaming structure provides many more intermediate opportunities for reflection and celebration of accomplishment than do midterms and finals. Another is the (now recognizable as behemoth in importance) social aspect – that a far greater number of peers and participants (rather than just a single poorly equipped ‘teacher’) can/will learn about you by the way you play a game and provide valuable feedback for his/her/and your own future reference.
There’s more to say (once again, most willing to discuss further in the comments area to this post) but one thing that distinguishes gamification as having far, far greater potential for Disruption than on-line learning is the fact that it is quite unlikely (if not impossible), given the structure, the supply chain, and the technologies currently employed by the current educational system, for the incumbent to usurp a potential Disruption coming from this area. As such, if/when the gaming industry takes over education, the end of traditional education will come about in the standard Disruptive manner – that is, not with a bang, but a whimper.
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Rick Mueller
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