A POOR
UNDERSTANDING OF GAME MECHANICS UNDERMINES GAME-BASED LEARNING WITH
STUDENT-DESIGNED GAMES
INTRODUCTION
Game-based Learning (GBL) seems to be everywhere these
days, and it intuitively seems that this is a good idea. From a round of Simon Says at preschool to
the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) played by increasingly diverse groups of
adults; from grand-master Chess and World Cup Football to the ubiquitous
cell-phone games of Candy Crush and Angry Birds, it seems that everyone likes
games and everyone plays games. Thus, it
seems only natural to incorporate games into the classroom.
There are many ways to introduce game-based learning
in the classroom, from the simple Friday-afternoon reward to the highly complex
GBL system in place at Quest to Learn schools.
In this paper, however, I propose to focus on using
games in a very particular way. Rather
than superposing content on a game base in a “chocolate-covered broccoli” type
of way, I will argue that the core mechanics of the game themselves are what
drive the message, and that this learning can be enhanced if the students
themselves design the game.
I will argue that just as we learn to read so that we
can then read to learn, we must be taught to design games in order to then be
able to design games to learn. I suggest
that it is not enough for students to play games that others have designed, for
the real learning occurs in the process of design itself.
In my study, I show how a group of university
undergraduate students understood the concept of game-design when designing
games about human-rights and social justice issues. I will show that their ideas were based on a
faulty grasp of the power of game mechanics leading them to learn less than
they otherwise could have about the content and that this can be remedied by
educating them first in the basic of game-design.
I conclude that the lack of fundamental understanding
of how games work undermines the Game-Based Learning approach.
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