"Class Dismissed": An Alternative to Injecting Games into the Classroom

I am not the first person to ponder the potential of games in education. I just read an article from the Scholastic Web site that analyzes the abilities of video games to engage students and help them learn, and outlines some of the dangers educators need to avoid in order to make an introduction of video game curricula successful. The Mayfair Games Web site has a "Teacher Zone," which harbors a couple of different articles that describe how their games can teach valuable skills in the classroom. Research is being done as well to validate the use of games as educational tools. A researcher's post on bgdf.com elicits advice for developing a system to demonstrate scientifically how "games [...] can be used to increase motivation to learn."

Primarily, however, it seems that these expeditions into the realm of game pragmatics address ways to interject a game--such as Catan--into a system--such as the classroom--that, once played and discussed, will bring about a desired result--a modification in learning. Simply put, current use of games for instruction necessitates that participants know they are playing a game. A middle school class might stop other activity, sit down in groups, play Catan, and then evaluate what they have learned. Similarly, high school students might take an hour out of the week to develop an empire in Civilization 3, such as at Roosevelt High School, in Chicago.

In both examples, the idea is to teach a lesson through an entertaining medium. The game is not the lesson, the game is the avenue by which the lesson is learned. In other words, a history lesson about the Romans might just as easily be learned by watching the movie Gladiator--and surely there are still some bookworms out there who won't be able to keep their hands off the actual textbook. How should educators decide which medium is best? Or should media be integrated in such a way as to engage as many learning styles and interests as possible?

Permit me to ask a different question. Since, as in the cases above, the game is merely the medium of certain curricula, what if the game becomes the actual curriculum? Board game mechanics, as manifested in various Eurogames (among others), create incentives to play--and replay--and in the process the players learn both the best ways to interact within the system and the small details that are required in order to participate effectively. The right combinations of incentives guides players to learn both technique and detail. For example, after playing Axis and Allies a couple of times a player might learn some strategies that are effective in breaking the backs of the Germans, as well as certain historical details, such as that India was part of the British Empire, or that islands without production capacity can still be very valuable. The game mechanics provide the incentives that make the game fun, and players learn as a result.

Good mechanics transcend boundaries of genre and medium. Until Agricola came along, I don't think that "farming" would have rated very high on lists of interesting game ideas, but the mechanics of Agricola make it compelling. In the same way, refined mechanics could make even the most mundane subject lessons in school equally interesting. Imagine a class whose final grade is determined by a combination of accumulated "resources," such as in Agricola. "Resources" could be produced via a system of "worker placement," in which students are compete with others for rights to one of a number of finite options. As students participate they learn the material because their grades depend on it, but mostly because the mechanics are compelling.

Perhaps this method could be applied to organizational theory as well. Workers could compete for pay raises or bonuses, not by taking off time from work to play a game, but because the mechanics of the workplace act like a game. I admit, of course, that this application of game mechanics could be incredibly difficult to implement, but I think it warrants some amount of research. Games are breaking in to the classroom, and as we discuss the best ways to educate our children with games, we should explore the possibilities of games not only as tools, but as systems. The effects--while beneficial to education--could be even further-reaching and more provocative.