What Should Be the Role of Computer Games in Education? Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences - Mayer - 2016 - Article

What is this article about?

Computer games for learning are games that have the goal to promote learning. In this paper, the author asks: “Can playing computer games help people to develop knowledge and skills, and if so, how should computer games be used in education?”.

Game visionaries would like to see schools in which children play computer games which help them learn academic content and skills. This might lead to students who are motivated to learn, because they like to play computer games for learning.

Most game advocates feel like contemporary schools are failing, and that video games can help to promote student learning. This idea for an ‘educational revolution’ is based on the idea that computer games lead to higher motivation. If this is correct, then this means that school activities should include more computer games.

However, it is always important to check whether claims are supported by evidence. There have been a lot of reviews of scientific research on games for learning. However, their overall conclusions have not supported the claims of game advocates…

For example, Tobias and colleagues (2011) conclude:

“There is considerably more enthusiasm for describing the affordances of games and their motivating properties than for conducting research to demonstrate that those affordances are used to attain instructional aims . . . This would be a good time to shelve the rhetoric about games and divert those energies to conducting needed research. (p. 206)”

In this paper, the author describes what the current state of scientific research evidence is about games for learning, and what the policy implications of this research is for educational practice.

What does the research tell us?

Research on computer learning games are divided into three categories: value-added research, cognitive consequences research, and media comparison research. Value-added research examines which game features improve learning, the cognitive consequences research studies whether playing games improves cognitive skills, and media comparison research looks at whether games are better than conventional media at promoting academic learning. Observational studies which describe game playing can also add to the understanding of games for learning, but in this article only experimental studies are discussed, because they allow for causal conclusions which are necessary for educational policy recommendations.

What is value-added research?

In this type of research, the learning outcomes of people who play the base version / ‘standard version’ of a game (control group) is compared to those who play the same game, but with one feature added (treatment group). This approach is supported by studies that have shown that adding instructional support to computer games leads to positive effects such as selecting relevant information, organizing it, and integrating it with relevant prior knowledge. This is often based on an effect size of Cohen’s d. This effect size shows how many standard deviations of improvement were caused by adding the new feature. In the educational research, effect sizes of d=0.4 or greater are considered to be important.

As an example, the Design-A-Plant game is used to teach environmental science. Students have to travel toa distant planet that has specific climate patterns (heavy rain, heavy winds). They then must design a plant that will survive there, and therefore they have to select from eight types of roots, eight types of stems, and eight types of leaves. The students get to see how well their plant survived, and there is a local character called Herman-the-Bug who explains the plant functions. Across nine studies, students did better when Herman-the-Bug’s words were spoken (treatment group) instead of printed on the screen (control group). This is an example of a value-added study.

There are five game features that improve student performance on learning outcomes:

1. Using conversational style (personalization)
2. Presenting words in spoken form (modality)
3. Adding prompts to explain (self-explanation)
4. Adding explanations or advice (coaching)
5. Adding pregame descriptions of key components (pretraining)

For value-added research, it is also important to determine what does not work. For example, in the Design-A-Plant game, students used VR. They liked it, but it did not improve their performance.

What is cognitive consequences research?

In cognitive consequences research, students’ cognitive skills are measured and are compared using pretest-to-posttest gains. For example, the skills of students who play a normal game versus students who play a different type of game.

Most cognitive research is done using commercial games, but some research is also conducted using specific games that teach cognitive skills.

For example, in first-person shooter games such as Unreal Tournament or Medal of Honor, the players must be alert at all times for attackers. According to Anderson and Bavelier (2011), playing first-person shooter games over extended periods can improve a variety of cognitive skills such as perceptual attention, compared to non-shooter games.

There seem to be two types of games that promote cognitive improvements. The first is the first-person shooter games, which promote perceptual attention skills (useful field of view or multiple object tracking). The second type is playing puzzle games such as Tetris, which improve spatial cognitive skills (mental rotation of Tetris-like shapes). Thus, Tetris improves a specific spatial cognitive skill: mental rotation of Tetris-like shapes. There is thus a more limited impact than playing first-shooter games.

What is media comparison research?

In media comparison research, the learning outcomes of students who learn academic content from a game is compared to students who learn it from books or from face-to-face lectures. However, media comparison research may be confounded by other differences in presented content and instructional methods.

As an example, to teach about wet-cell batteries, players play the Cache 17 in which they have to find lost artwork in an old World War II bunker system.  Other students have to learn the same information about the batteries from a PowerPoint slideshow. A study showed that the conventional group did better than the game group. Thus, when the content was the same in both groups, the game did not improve learning.

What can be concluded?

It seems that many games for learning are ineffective. Therefore, it is very important to choose games based on appropriate criteria. The selection of educational games should depend on the available evidence. It is also important to select games based on an understanding of how learning works, which means that games must have features to maintain motivation and provide sufficient instructions for example in the form of feedback.

There are several policy implications, namely:

1. Put the revolution on hold. Based on the available research, educational practices should not be revolutionized and changed into practices based on computer games.
2. Use Games for Targeted Learning Objectives. Even though education does not need to be revolutionized, adding small games could be positive.
3. Align Games with Classroom Programs and Activities. Targeted games should fit within the existing educational program. This thus means that targeted games should be used to supplement and complement instructions instead of replacing them.
4. Do not confuse liking with learning. It is important to focus on games that improve learning outcomes, and not focus only on how much students like playing the game. Liking is not necessarily learning! There are a lot of examples in which students liked one version of the game the best, but did not learn the best from it.
5. Adapt instructional activities to maintain challenge. Games’ features to adapt to the player’s current level of competence are very important, because this produces motivation. Therefore, using well-designed games to create the appropriate level of challenges for each student is a policy implication.