An article on games and learning that appeared in the Business Day on Fri, 26 September, with some quotes from me, Alan Amory and Danny Day. Most of the facts are right 🙂

The BBC reports that a daily dose of computer games can boost maths attainment, according to a study carried out in Scottish schools.

The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scotland using the Brain Training from the Dr Kawashima game on the Nintendo DS every day.

Researchers found that while both groups — the control and experiment group — had improved their scores, the experimental group using the game had improved by a further 50%.

What’s interesting here is that most game literature likes to promote complex games as the vehicle for real learning, but this study shows that even drill-and-practice games help, if improving maths scores is what you want to achieve.

More on the project at Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Yesterday the second Games and Learning Indaba took place at the University of Johannesburg. It was very different to the first indaba held in Cape Town, I think largely because more game developers attended the Jo’burg event. In total 33 people attended, including researchers from the Meraka Institute and various universities, members of civil society organisations (e.g. SANGONeT and Women’sNet) and a number of teachers.

As in Cape Town, the reason for the event was to explore the potential that digital game-based learning holds for education (formal) and learning (informal) in South Africa (SA), especially in improving communication and analytical thinking skills.

Why did people attend the indaba? Game developers wanted to make connections with researchers and ask: are they gamers themselves? Is their work grounded in reality or based on assumptions? Researchers wanted to meet game developers. One attendee came to find out if anyone knew of a game that is as addictive as a first-person shooter, but not as violent. Civil society people wanted to know more about using games for social change, in other words, about serious games. A game developer wanted to know what companies expect to pay for games.

While not all of these questions were answered, what clearly emerged from the session was an interest between game designers and developers, academics and teachers to work together to create, pilot and evaluate games. This will be challenging, as the some of the heated discussions demonstrated, because each of these groups have different interests that motivate them.

A number of game development challenges were discussed:

• It takes an enormous amount of time – and is therefore very expensive.
• It requires specialist skills, often not found in SA.
• The different belief systems and ideas between designers and developers need to be negotiated during the creation of the game.

I gave a short presentation on two gaming conferences that I recently attended.

As in Cape Town, Professor Alan Amory presented again. This quote sums up one of his fundamental beliefs about games and learning:

I don’t think you learn from technology, you learn with technology. When you are designing a learning activity, that is the object of the exercise. The tools, e.g. games, that you use to mediate that learning can be very complex or very simple. That’s a very different way to think about games. It’s not the thing – the game – that is important, it’s what you do with the thing that counts.

All games are socially constructed and have ideologies embedded in them, e.g. those of the game designers and developers. That is why there are games that promote gender bias. That doesn’t matter as long as the game is used as a tool to explore the topic of gender. It is essential to deconstruct these socially constructed artifacts. The process of deconstruction, where the game is used as the discussion starter about violence, gender bias, male dominance, etc. is where the real learning with games occurs.

A point that everyone seemed to agree upon was that gaming, as an element of an increasingly digitally mediated world, is forcing educators to rethink how they teach and how learners learn at a very fundamental level, in a way that talks to youth today.

As the discussions continue on the Games and Learning in South Africa Google Group, we will hopefully see more perspectives, collaborations and findings emerge that will help to exploit the learning potential of games.

More photos of the event on Flickr.

At the Shuttleworth Foundation we seek innovative ways to improve the communication and analytical thinking skills of youth in South Africa (SA). One of the ways to potentially develop these skills is through digital gaming — be it on a PC, mobile phone, platform (e.g. Sony PlayStation), handheld (e.g. Nintendo DS) or some other device.

The question we are currently asking ourselves is: What potential does digital game-based learning hold for education (formal) and learning (informal) in SA, especially in improving communication and analytical thinking skills?

To begin to answer this question, I hosted the first Games and Learning Indaba (workshop) at the Foundation in Cape Town last week. The indaba had three overall aims:

• To explore the state of gaming amongst youth in SA;
• To identify opportunities for using games in education and learning; and
• To identify barriers to increased use of games in education and learning.

While there is interesting and relevant research about games and learning coming out of the developed world, not much research has been conducted in SA. Our context is significant: we have a particular education system with its own strengths and weaknesses; our society is multilingual and multicultural; and the access to technology for our youth is varied and vastly different to, say, that in the USA. It is therefore important to understand the opportunities, challenges and findings here.

Twenty people attended the indaba, collectively representing game designers and developers, academia, university students, the Western Cape Education Department, creators of educational content, and marketers. Sadly, no learners attended; we tried to get a few there but they had to attend school!

When asked what they were expecting to get out of the indaba, attendee responses included: to get ideas for a particular game, to join a network of practitioners and researchers in this space, to see how more game-like activities can be used in school computer labs, or simply to find out more about games and learning.

Elaine Rumboll, Director of Executive Education at the UCT Graduate School of Business, described how many corporate executives were very excited about the prospect of gaming as a way of embedding learning back in the workplace. She is currently developing a game for a corporate client and wanted to connect with a group in this space.

First off, to get to know each other the attendees did some “speed dating” — meeting a stranger in only three minutes before moving on to someone else.

Professor Alan Amory, a well known game studies researcher from the University of Johannesburg, gave the first presentation — Social constructivism in games based learning in the South African context — on game design, development and research that he and others conducted with previously disadvantaged youth in SA. They found that the highest levels of learning were achieved when there was social dialogue between game players (learners playing a game in pairs as opposed to playing alone). Their conclusion: people learned not from the games but rather with the games as they tried to solve the game problems together.

Marion Walton, senior lecturer at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT, gave a fascinating presentation titled Beyond communities of practice: Understanding informal learning in online games. As part of her PhD, she joined two guilds in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft. Much of the current game literature portrays online gaming communities — in actual games and also on forums, mailing lists, etc. where games are discussed — as close-knit places of informal learning, mentorship and inclusion (what Gee calls “affinity spaces”). While this is true for some communities, it is certainly not true for all, as Marion discovered.

The World of Warcraft guilds she tried to join were rife with prejudice, sexism, overt masculinity and profanity. These “tribes” are highly exclusionary, with wannabe members needing to jump through humiliating hoops to join, and then play along within the harsh social hierarchies of the tribe if they manage to be accepted.

Marion’s thought-provoking research thus questions the often celebratory view of online gaming communities. Her presentation highlighted a challenge for those wanting to use games for learning and education: How to allow communities to develop that do not replicate the prejudiced practices found in the offline world? This question was discussed in light of the recent xenophobia attacks in SA.

From group discussions during the indaba, some of the challenges identified for games and learning included copyright laws in SA, the cost and logistics of distributing games, lack of funding for game development and research, the need for a more active game development industry in SA, and the challenges of incorporating gaming into classrooms.

A particularly interesting perspective was this: “When it comes to the use of educational technology, we often have to find ways for learners to ‘leapfrog’ over teachers, who are less tech-savvy.”

Overall, I was very happy with the indaba as the first tentative step to critically explore the space between “moral panic” — (“games are violent, addictive and a waste of time”) — and “blind faith” — (“gaming is the only future”), concerning games and learning. The varied group generated different perspectives on the games and learning space. Certainly there was much enthusiasm, interest and a desire for more events like this. I created a Google Group to support an ongoing dialogue on this topic.

For more, see Jeremy Setzer’s blog post about the event and the full set of photos.