I just published an article titled Video Games Rant on one of my other blogs. Most of the article is not directly related to education, otherwise I would have published it here instead. As I was writing the last few paragraphs of this rant, I considered some opposing viewpoints and had an interesting revelation about video games. That revelation is directly related to education, so I think it is appropriate to discuss it in a little more detail here.
I have asserted the value of video games in brain development many times. I have also done a lot of research on the subject, and so far I have found no explanation for why video games are so effective for learning, except that they tend to be more motivating that traditional teaching practices. While this is true, it is actually just one element of the brain science behind learning. It turns out that video games are more effective for learning because they conform better to the way the brain is designed to learn.
The question I asked in the other article is how ancient humans got by without the benefits of video games, if video games are so good for us. The answer was, "They lived them!" This might sound counter-intuitive, but it is true. Modern video games help develop mapping skills by including an element of risk with getting lost. In ancient times, humans learned mapping skills in a very similar way. Video games improve perception by including elements that are difficult to see, but which either offer benefits or reduce risks if discovered. In ancient times, missing small details, like a stalking predator, could result in serious injury or death. Video games improve quick decision making skills by putting players into situations where acting too slow has strong negative consequences. Similarly, ancient humans often had to deal with situations where quick action was necessary for survival. One of the biggest benefits of video games is developing good problem solving skills. Ancient humans learned problem solving skills by trying to find ways to make life less dangerous and difficult. Now, however, many humans have very poor mapping skills, decision making skills, perception, and problem solving skills. Unfortunately, successfully making life much less dangerous and far easier has not eliminated the need for these skills. The strong need for more engineers in the U.S. is evidence of this. In addition, mapping skills are important for getting around in big cities and even suburbs. Perception is extremely important in activities like driving. Problem solving skills are important in nearly every aspect of life. We still need these skills, and it turns out that video games are the most effective way to get them, if you do not count living with the constant threat of death.
The point of all of this is that thousands or more years of natural selection have produced human brains that are ideally suited to learning in exactly the way that video games teach (which explains the attraction). Video games have one additional benefit over real life experience: The penalty for failure is low. Failing in real life used to result in death, severe injury, or at least pain. Even in the most strict video games, the highest penalty for failure is having to start over from nothing. In most modern video games, the worst penalty is having to redo a little bit of work. This reduces fear of failure, which increases motivation to try new things. Trying new things is one very important way of learning. Failing is also a very good learning experience. When the cost of failure is low, the fear of failure is reduced, which encourages trying risky things that will likely end in failure, but which will sometimes result in awesome success. Even the failures themselves have value, because they will always teach what does not work. In short, reducing the cost of failure helps increase motivation to learn by experience. While natural selection may have suited our brains to learn by experience, we can use video games to make the consequences of failure acceptable. Video games are actually better for effective learning than the conditions that suited our brains to learn from video games so well.
We can take advantage of this knowledge. It is possible that there is no classroom teaching style that could be as effective as video games for teaching. If this is the case (and research aught to be conducted to discover if it is), then we should be spending a lot more effort figuring out how to effectively use video games as learning tools for real life subjects. People like Salman Khan and Ananth Pai have already started using game elements for learning with great success. Armed with a better understanding of why games work so well for learning though, we should be able to do much better. There are millions of people in the U.S. that spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games. If we can sneak some real education into video games, without reducing motivation to play them, we could educate the people of the U.S. at minimal cost. It is even possible that well engineered video games could dramatically reduce the need for a large public education system. The evidence is very strong that video games have huge potential as teaching tools. We need to put resources into learning how to use them most effectively.
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