Gaming tends to be regarded as a harmless diversion at best, a vile corruptor of youth at worst. But the usual critiques fail to recognize its potential for experiential learning. Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It’s learning to be – a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture – as opposed to learning about. —John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas —You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired!: Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training. (Wired)
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This is a very interesting discussion.
I have played wow in the past and I learned a lot about people’s behavior. But I also learned how to express myself by writing and using my voice.
I mean you don’t get that chance in school.. Sure you read gramatical books, but you don’t get the chance to put your language skills to the test..
Also, you will learn a lot more if you do something you like doing.
My english have improved a lot and I’m not sure I would have gotten that effect by studying books.
/David
Andrei, thanks for your ideas. Since I’m a member of a humanities division, I am of course very interested in the “soft skills” that you mention. While reading a novel about, say, a rags-to-riches success story, doesn’t improve student’s accounting skills, it might lay a great framework for a high-level discussion on ethics or entitlement or class. Certain games lend themselves to that kind of analysis.
The “serious games” folks are working on ways to teach hard skills, too, such as a game in which you have to use an in-game 3D design tool to design the parts that you need in order to use weapons weapons to win battles.
I think I know a fair share about World of Warcraft and its player-base, considering that I am moderating a site that teaches them how to cheat at it.
I agree that certain soft skills can indeed be picked up to a certain degree, especially for younger players. I would think of leadership/mediation/communication (by managing a guild), discipline (when taking part in raids) and knowledge about human behaviour (how do people act when there are no “hard” consequences – e.g. ninja looting).
However, the example mentioned here ( “I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done,” he says. “Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task.”) – is a really bad example. A trained engineer learns a systematic problem solving approach through the super-simple quest system in World of Warcraft? I think that’s far fetched.
My guess is that wired wanted a story that goes into the “Joi Ito networks over WoW” / “World of Warcraft is the new golf” theme and this was the best their writer could come up with for the assignment.
I agree that Wired never met a technology it didn’t like.
Among the useful things that gamers learn is teamwork, leadership (note that the applicant in question was head of an in-game guild), the ability to manage resources, awareness of one’s own problem-solving strategies,
But you’re right to be skeptical. Among the not-so-useful things gamers learn is that the world gives them instant and specific feedback that will help them classify almost every microaction as part of a “winning” or “losing” strategy, that you should be able to hit the restart button if you make a stupid mistake, and that every problem has a built-in solution that you can unlock if you find the right clue or cheat code.
I was surprised by just how many presentations there are on gaming at this conference. At the very least, it’s a trendy new metaphor. Much more usefully, it’s a way of understanding the way the digital generation relates to the world, and the problems that the print generation may encounter when trying to teach that digital generation.
I consider myself a digital generation 1.5. Most of my education was in the print world, and while I loved books from an early age, during my childhood I slowly emigrated from the print world into the digital world. No, that implies a dichontomy. I don’t have to choose between one world and the other. I’ve got dual citizenship, but that means I’m not fully part of either culture.
(God, I love my job!)
I’m not sure I buy what Brown & Thomas are arguing here. Seems more like wishful thinking. And the only people who will hire a Warcraft gamer are the people who make Warcraft….and maybe the military.
Gaming is “virtual” learning — just like any exercise in a classroom — not “experiential” learning. Correct? If it’s “learning to be” than I ask, “learning to be” what, exactly? An avatar? A supergalactic warthog? A serial killer? Hrmmm…
That’s one of the books you picked up from my office, right? No, I didn’t re-check it out.
Mr. Jerz,
Do you know who took out “the ultimate history of video games” from the library? Was it possibly you? That book has quite a significant chunk of my thesis topic in it.