DIGITAL Gaming for Education!

Scientists call for government to help fund video game research

10/17/2006 1:47:21 PM, by Jacqui Cheng

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) released a report (PDF) today recommending that the federal government provide funding to create more educational video games. They argue that video games teach higher-level, complex thinking skills that are used in today's workplaces, and that these skills would give American students an edge in the job market over foreign competition.

The conclusions were drawn from a summit held last year in Washington, DC and sponsored by the FAS, the Entertainment Software Association, and the National Science Foundation. The summit, composed of nearly a hundred experts ranging from the video game industry to teachers, focused on four key issues: video game features that support learning, research needed to support video games in education, market barriers, and barriers in the school system.

The panel determined that there are, in fact, skills learned by video games that are of value to today's employers, including "strategic and analytical thinking, problem solving, planning and execution, decision-making, and adaptation to rapid change." Additionally, they found that video games foster goal-setting, practice in patience, and even team building. Carefully noting that there is a difference between video games developed for entertainment versus education, the FAS's report says that an emphasis in learning in video games could greatly benefit future generations of workers.

In order to continue to foster these skills in children and young adults, more educational games need to be developed, according to the report. There are a number of barriers holding back the video game industry from doing so, however. First, there is little-to-no actual research done on how effective educational video games can be on children, making the industry unwilling to take the financial risk in developing such programs without the promise that they will take off. Secondly, without any sort of testing that measures the skills learned in video games, schools are scared to sacrifice textbook time for video game time, especially in the eyes of parents and teachers who hold a dim view of the value of gaming.

So what are the recommendations? FAS recommends that the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor should work in conjunction with educators and researchers to develop a research & development schedule to evaluate learning in games.

Additionally, part of the R&D schedule should include a method by which those skills would be assessed. Also included in the recommendations are school systems working educational video games into their teaching, a feat that could take some time given the strict budgets and lesson plans that many schools already face.

*21st Century Digital Learning Environments have had seminal discussions with the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University (MSU) regarding the co-development of such a collaborative initiative between their organization and K-12 Education.