Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines
PDF. James Paul Gee asks, "How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games?" Here's how (quoted from the text):
- Learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers).
- Different styles of learning work better for different people.
- People take on a new identity they value and in which they become heavily invested.
- They can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.
- Early problems are designed to lead players to form good guesses about how to proceed when they face harder problems later on.
- Challenges feel hard, but doable. Learners feel - and get evidence - that their effort is paying off.
- Repeated cycles of learners practicing skills until they are nearly automatic, then having those skills fail in ways that cause the learners to have to think again and learn anew.
- Give verbal information just in time and on demand
- Create simplified systems, stressing a few key variables and their interactions.
- Risks and dangers greatly mitigated (one of the worst problems with school: it's too risky and punishing).
- See the skills first and foremost as a strategy for accomplishing a goal and only secondarily as a set of discrete skills.
- People learn skills, strategies, and ideas best when they see how they fit into an overall larger system to which they give meaning.
- Make the meanings of words and concepts clear through experiences the player has and activities the player carries out. More...