Literature Review in Games and Learning
John Kirriemuir, Ceangal Angela McFarlane, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol FOREWORD Computer games are today an important part of most children’s leisure lives and increasingly an important part of our culture as a whole. We often, as adults, watch in amazement as children dedicate hours to acting as football coaches, designers of empires, controllers of robots, wizards and emperors. In the past, computer games have been dismissed as a distraction from more ‘worthy’ activities, such as homework or playing outside. Today, however, researchers, teachers and designers of learning resources are beginning to ask how this powerful new medium might be used to support children’s learning. Rather than shutting the door of the school against the computer game, there is now increasing interest in asking whether computer games might be offering a powerful new resource to support learning in the information age. This review is intended as a timely introduction to current thinking about the role of computer games in supporting children’s learning inside and out of school. It highlights the key areas of research in the field, in particular the increasing interest in pleasurable learning, learning through doing and learning through collaboration, that games seem to offer. At the same time, the review takes a measured tone in acknowledging some of the obstacles and challenges to using games within our current education system and within our current models of learning. It goes on to propose some ways in which designers, researchers and educational policy makers might draw on the growing body of research in the field to create learning resources and environments that go beyond a sugar-coating of ‘fun’ to the full engagement that computer games seem to offer so many children today. We are keen to receive feedback on the Futurelab reports and welcome comments at research@futurelab.org.uk Keri Facer Director of Learning Research Futurelab

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AIMS This review provides: • a summary of the contemporary state of the computer and video gaming industry, market and culture • an overview of the main developments in research into gaming and the educational relevance of video games, and a summary of the literature resulting from this research • a basis for communication between the educational research community and the commercial sector on the subject of the use of games technologies in the design of learning resources • a basis for discussion within educational communities on the use of digital games within educational settings. CONTEXT Computer games are a growing part of our culture; the global market is worth billions of dollars, related activities range from published magazines to spontaneous internet communities, and the impact of games play on young people has attracted significant interest from the popular media. Three quarters of children play regularly – is this harmful or beneficial, are they learning as they play, and if so what? This review considers the findings of research into the relationship between games and players, and the theoretical and actual implications for learning. The research evidence is complex, and thinly spread. The study of computer games, or game players, cannot be mapped onto one research discipline. Relevant areas of study include, but are not limited to computer science, education, psychology, youth and media and cultural studies. As a result, aspects of investigation into games and game players can ‘straddle’ several different academic disciplines. As games have become more complex in terms of graphics, complexity, interaction and narrative, so a variety of genres have come to dominate the market. There is, however, no standard categorisation of such games; different stakeholders in the games industry eg game outlets, developers, academics, web review sites, use a taxonomy appropriate to their own audience. Nonetheless the differences between genres, and even between games within one genre, differentiate the way they are played, and their potential to support learning. Thus attempts to generalise the effect of games or gaming may be unhelpful. Perhaps as a result of the diversity and complexity of games themselves, and the range of perspectives taken by researchers, there are few hard and fast findings in the literature. In order to better understand games and game play, and how they contribute to learning, it may be necessary to distinguish more clearly the nature of gaming and the nature of learning and the learner. GAMES AND GAMERS Researchers and commentators have attempted to understand the lure of computer games. This has been characterised as a combination of fantasy, challenge and curiosity, and a level of engagement described as ‘flow’ where players become oblivious to distractions. Concern has been expressed that this leads to a neglect of other activities, often assumed to be automatically more worthy. Other authors see games play as inherently valuable, leading to a development of a range of skills and competences that may transfer to other social and work-related uses of digital technologies. The debate around violence and gaming is as yet unresolved. There are two perspectives; that games increase aggression or that games provide a release for pent-up aggression. In all likelihood both are legitimate conclusions, and the outcomes varies with game and player. Gender is a common subject of games related research, focusing mainly on the image of females within games, or the role of gender in influencing games play. There are few clear outcomes, but the proportion of gamers who are female seems to be growing and this may be related to the increase in social gaming through on and offline multiplayer options. GAMES AND EDUCATION Research into the use of mainstream games in education is relatively novel, but growing rapidly. Research is mainly concerned with the development of related competences and literacies during game play, or the role of games in the formation of learning communities either while gaming or related to game play. Use of mainstream games in schools remains rare, and is unlikely to be integrated into the curriculum. Reasons for this include: • it is difficult for teachers to identify quickly how a particular game is relevant to some component of the statutory curriculum, as well as the accuracy and appropriateness of the content within the game • the difficulty in persuading other school stakeholders as to the potential/actual educational benefits of computer games • the lack of time available to teachers to familiarise themselves with the game, and methods of producing the best results from its use • the amount of irrelevant content or functionality in a game which could not be removed or ignored, thus wasting valuable lesson time. Nonetheless, teachers and parents recognised that games play can support valuable skill development, such as: • strategic thinking • planning • communication • application of numbers • negotiating skills • group decision-making • data-handling. Significantly the experience of game play seems to be affecting learners’ expectations of learning activities. Preferred tasks are fast, active and exploratory, with information supplied in multiple forms in parallel. Traditional school-based learning may not meet these demands. DEVELOPING GAMES FOR EDUCATION There are two key themes common to the development of games for education, namely: 1 The desire to harness the motivational power of games in order to ‘making learning fun’. 2 A belief that ‘learning through doing’ in games such as simulations offers a powerful learning tool. Software designed to support young people’s learning often borrows from game design in an attempt to replicate the levels of engagement and harness this to facilitate more traditional learning. These attempts are not always successful and the results do not always convince a discerning gamer. Most edutainment has failed to realise expectations, either because: • the games have been too simplistic in comparison to competing video games • the tasks are repetitive ie continually doing sums, and thus quickly become boring and ‘work’ • the tasks are poorly designed and do not support progressive understanding • related to this last point, the range of activities is severely limited within the game, usually concentrating on one skill, or accumulation of homogenous content • the target audience becomes aware that it is being coerced into ‘learning’, in possibly a patronising manner. The debate on ‘making learning fun’ often assumes that children do not enjoy learning. Yet much research evidence contradicts this, arguing that children do enjoy learning when they have a sense of their own progression and where the learning is relevant and appropriate. This focus on ‘fun’ and on ‘concealing the learning’ within educational games may, in fact, be a red herring. Instead, it might be worth returning to some early analyses that describes the pleasures of games play as a ‘flow’. The conditions likely to induce the flow state are characterised by Malone (1980) as: • the activity should be structured so that the player can increase or decrease the level of challenges faced, in order to match exactly personal skills with the requirements for action • it should be easy to isolate the activity, at least at the perceptual level, from other stimuli, external or internal, which might interfere with involvement in it • there should be clear criteria for performance; a player should be able to evaluate how well or how poorly (s)he is doing at any time • the activity should provide concrete feedback to the player, so that (s)he can tell how well (s)he is meeting the criteria of performance • the activity ought to have a broad range of challenges, and possibly several qualitatively different ranges of challenge, so that the player may obtain increasingly complex information about different aspects of her/himself.