Games, Learning and the Looming Crisis for Higher Education

http://vimeo.com/15732568

"I see game design and learning design (what a good professional teacher does) as inherently similar activities. The principles of "good games" and of "good learning" are the same, by and large. This is so, of course, because games are just well designed problem-solving spaces with feedback and clear outcomes and that is the most essential thing for real, deep, and consequential learning"

http://henryjenkins.org/2011/03/how_learners_can_be_on_top_of.html



The first part of an interview with James Paul Gee.  Some really interesting theory on immersive learning design, looking at Halo and Civilisation as examples of learning design where you don't need to test students after the fact, learning and evaluation are built into the design of the activity itself.   Also interesting is the level of difficulty that games present, a stark contrast to constant pushes for academic learning to be made easier and easier.  I'm beginning to think that this push for easy learning, however well intended, is at the heart of much of the disconnection and dissatisfaction of students.  They want a challenge.  Those that don't probably aren't sufficiently committed.

"The breakthroughs have been slower in coming than I had hoped. Like many new ideas, the idea of games for learning (better, "games as learning") has been often co-opted by entrenched paradigms and interests, rather than truly transforming them. We see now a great many skill-and-drill games, games that do in a more entertaining fashion what we already do in school. We see games being recruited in workplaces--and lots of other instances of "gamification"--simply to make the current structures of exploitation and traditional relationships of power more palatable. We will see the data mining capacities of games and digital media in general recruited for supervision, rather than development. The purpose of games as learning (and other game-like forms of learning) should be to make every learner a proactive, collaborative, reflective, critical, creative and innovative problem solver; a producer with technology and not just a consumer; and a fully engaged participant and not just a spectator in civic life and the public sphere."