Transformations
April 13, 2007
by Todd Bryant, Language Program Administrator, Dickinson College
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Digital gaming has recently emerged as a major area of interest for computer-mediated teaching and learning. James Paul Gee (University of Wisconsin-Madison) more than any other person launched this movement with his influential What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003). A series of books, conferences, professional meetings, workshops, and projects have followed, all working broadly with the notion that computer games often demonstrate pedagogical structures that academia can study, and from which instructional technology can benefit.
Four levels of higher education engagement with gaming have so far emerged. First is using preexisting games and projects, such as Second Life for social media, or Civilization and other simulations for history and sociology. Second is modifying preexisting games, transforming the content into forms suited to curricular needs. For example, an MIT project modified the fantasy game Neverwinter Nights into a social simulation of the American Revolution. A third level is for members of higher education to create games themselves. Faculty working with technologists have done this (e.g., Econ 201, University of North Carolina, Greensboro). Students have also created games as class projects (e.g., The Phone). Lastly, games and game content can serve as objects of study, either on their own terms or within other fields, such as communications or media studies.
Todd Bryant's approach is a fine example of the first. In the article that follows he describes selecting an already established computer game, the globally successful World of Warcraft, in order to enhance the teaching of German. Bryant reflects on the practical details involved in bringing a commercial game into the liberal arts classroom. He then explores what this case study suggests about gaming, especially in terms of student reflection.
Bryan Alexander, Editor
April 2007, Middlebury, VT
Games and simulations are an exciting and frequently debated topic among instructional technologists because of their potential to recreate traditional pedagogical concepts in an exciting way. Learner-centered and learner-driven activities such as collaboration, visualization of complex concepts, and connections of concepts between classes and disciplines are some of the useful effects in many of today’s commercial games, as well as “serious games” and simulations. Taken as a group, these new environments provide educators with opportunities to create a new kind of pedagogy founded on the concept of situated learning. In this method of teaching, students are placed in an environment and are provided with tools and guidance from the game and the professor in order to identify problems and solutions.
This idea of situated learning is a common goal in the foreign language classroom. We are continuously striving to create activities for students within a context of authentic language and culture. As a result, I had begun purchasing games in foreign languages as a source of educational entertainment for our language center. However, most of these games were single-user games that did not allow for communication with other students or the professor from within the game. I never made any real attempt to integrate these stand-alone games into the classroom, opting instead to leave students to find and play them on their own. My hope was to eventually find a game that would combine the built-in goals and motivations of these games with the authentic language and communication of our regular Skype language exchanges with native speakers abroad. An MMORPG would seem to be the ideal solution, allowing our students to play in the same environment and interact with players from other countries.
Unfortunately, the default language of these games is almost always English. This suddenly changed with the enormous success of World of Warcraft, a fantasy MMORPG that grew to such a great size that multiple “worlds” were created based on countries including France, Germany, and Spain. For those not familiar with World of Warcraft, it’s a fantasy game, much in the same vein as the Dungeons and Dragons games played decades ago. Players interact within the 3D environment, find quests within the game, and work with other players to complete the tasks set before them. These quests then form a storyline that governs the environment as a whole. I played the game on my own for most of the summer of 2006 and had very positive experiences interacting with players in the German “worlds.” I joined a guild and communicated frequently in German. Some of the vocabulary was obviously quite specific, but the vast majority of the German I used was of the everyday variety—discussing plans, where to go, etc.—that I thought would be useful to our students. Most importantly, I found the other players to be especially inviting and encouraging when I explained my plan to invite students from my beginning German class to play as part of their homework. With this background, I began planning how to use World of Warcraft in my German 101 class the following fall.
At first I tried to imagine activities that would at least loosely match the goals of the chapter we were covering at the time. This idea quickly became impractical. By design, the game changes based on courses of action chosen by the players. The “learner-centered” design of the game prevented me from creating structured activities that would focus on specific grammar or vocabulary without ruining the self-direction given to the players. Of course, since I was playing the game with the students, I naturally tried to use vocabulary and structures I knew they could understand. They used these same forms while speaking with each other as well. I still let them encounter German naturally while playing the game and offered explanations when asked, along with corrections in their speech in the same way I would during a warm-up at the beginning of class.
I also decided to give the students an option as to whether to play the game with me for two evenings a week starting in October or to meet with a language partner via videoconferencing for one hour a week starting at the same period of time. I wasn’t sure how many—if any—students would choose the more challenging option of playing a game that involved communicating for two hours in German using all four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) versus the more traditional language exchange that involves conversing with a native speaker for one hour (with roughly 20-30 minutes in German and 20-30 minutes in English). I was prepared for any distribution, but I wanted the students to interact with native speakers in some form or another and hoped that, by giving students the option, they would approach both situations more positively.
Once I had established my plan, I wanted to introduce the idea to the German faculty. I did not foresee any problems, since the games and language exchanges came in addition to the material and homework given as part of the other 101 sections, but I wanted them to hear my plan before they saw me in the lab with students discussing plans for their next quest and watching images of dwarves and elves running across the front of the room. I had also done quite a bit of reading on games in general that support widely held principles of our language departments that I could use as part of my discussion.
None of the faculty voiced any objection to my plan, though I did get a few funny looks when I mentioned the title “World of Warcraft.” I think language faculties are generally open to games because we frequently use concepts built into today’s games. Language classrooms at liberal arts colleges rarely if ever use what Mark Prensky calls the “tell and test” model where the faculty member lectures and students copy and memorize the information to be repeated at a later exam date. Even faculty members who consider themselves to be “traditionalists” apply principles of the communicative approach to language instruction. Common activities found in the communicative classroom, including group work, collaboration, task-based instruction, and role playing, can all be found in many video games.
Language instructors have also traditionally been early adopters of technology in general and communication technologies in particular. The Internet was recognized early on as a source for authentic materials, and the new methods of communication available in its early days and throughout the evolution of web 2.0 have been used in the instruction of foreign languages. This background in the field of foreign language education, which includes email pen pals, MOOs, and MUDs in the more distant past along with more cutting-edge technologies such as Skype and social software, gives even professors who consider themselves to be “technophobes” a very practical base of understanding the potential of next-generation gaming.
Lastly, language faculty do not often see themselves as bound to the order in which textbooks introduce concepts. This tendency is probably due to the fact that most of us learned the language abroad, where we encountered language outside of any prescribed order and were forced to make sense of new structures and vocabulary as we encountered them. As a group, we believe almost without exception that given enough time, motivation, and exposure we can all become fluent in a foreign language. This viewpoint is important since games are not structured in a way that would allow for the limiting of the target language. Though some are trying to create environments designed for language learners (see 3D Language), these games will necessarily either have to limit learner choice or expose them to unfamiliar content and structures. Rather than trying to change the learner-centered aspect of the games, we are better off seeing games as a potential way of immersing our students in the language for hours at a time. The reasons we give for providing access to foreign TV stations via satellite or the Internet can be used to justify the purchase of games with the added benefit that games are interactive and often require the students to produce language as well.
Interestingly, despite its obvious connections to gaming, second language acquisition is rarely mentioned in literature about the educational benefits and opportunities of games. It’s mentioned as a possibility once in Mark Prensky’s book, Don’t Bother Me Mom--I’m Learning (214), but is not even listed as one of the subjects in which games can be used on the book’s website, GamesParentsTeachers.com. James Paul Gee is a very prominent figure in the field of linguistics and the educational potential of games, but he addresses primary language acquisition. One of the best sources for second-language instructors may be a thesis in progress by Ravi Purushotma at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, Communicative 2.0. Perhaps the reason so few examples of games in foreign languages exist is that most people who view games look first at the content of the game, and then try to match this content to a subject or class. For languages, I would argue this does not have to be—nor should it be—the case. Our goal should be to find games that create an environment in which use of the target language is required throughout the game to meet the challenges set before the player.
While there are many reasons to try implementing games into the curriculum, there are several hurdles to overcome. The first is the question of time. While we support the idea of immersing our students in authentic language, we also feel the pressure of making sure our students have completely mastered the material covered by the course. If it comes down to making a decision between an extra week with the past tense and gaming, most of us are going to choose the past tense. I resolved this dilemma by adding class time in the evening. Not everyone is going to want to do this. However, many of us have teaching assistants (TAs). This kind of activity is ideal for a situation where you have a TA who is a native speaker and supposed to instruct or tutor but lacks experience in the classroom. Within a game environment, the TA or instructor is there as a guide to help students when they encounter a task beyond their ability or have drawn false conclusions. This role is much easier for an untrained native speaker to play than preparing and managing a class. Another option is to have the activities be part of a club and encourage participation in your class but not require it.
There were also some technical problems that had to be overcome before we could start playing. To start, we had to purchase a game for each one of the students who chose gaming instead of exchanges with a language partner. The European version of the game, which we needed to apply the World of Warcraft language packs, is not available in the U.S. We finally managed to get copies through Ebay U.K. We then required the students to pay for the subscription fee with their credit card. Since the games came with a free subscription of 30 days, they only had to pay for one additional month at around $15. The final step to getting the games running was figuring out how to apply the regular patches that need to be downloaded and applied to the game. By default, these patches are downloaded using a technology called BitTorrent, which is best known for its use in file-sharing programs and is banned or strictly limited on many campuses including ours. World of Warcraft allows the user to avoid the use of BitTorrent with a check box on the download program. For other games, you will most likely be able to find the patches for free on sites such as FilePlanet. However, now having downloaded the patches, we could not simply apply them each week as a home user would. As with many computer labs, our language center’s machines were “frozen,” meaning that any changes made would be erased after the machine rebooted. IT staff follow this protocol to keep specified settings and prevent someone from damaging the operating system. Of course, this protocol would also erase the patch after each reboot. The solution is either to keep the entire machine “thawed” or create a separate “thawed” partition with the game installed there.
Once we got started, the gaming in the evenings went very smoothly considering it was the first time for all of us. I had my students use Skype and created a conference call using highspeedconferencing.com/ to communicate with each other. This approach kept our class-specific communication separate from the text chat conversations we had with other players in the game. We used Skype because it is a common application on campus and familiar to the students. Of course, Skype isn't your only option. Most serious gamers use clients such as TeamSpeak with their own personal server, and most voice messengers will work fine as well, as long as they support voice conferences for the number of students playing. Once we were all connected, the students would start with a series of quests that I had scouted beforehand, which we would try to complete each evening. I treated the beginning of each quest the same way I would a reading assignment in class. Students would start with the title and a few keywords and surmise the general meaning of the paragraph. Then one student would read the quest aloud. Finally, students would work together to figure out the description and the goal of the quest. From here, I would let the students take control of the game, including deciding where to go, who was responsible for what, and how to proceed. I had a character as well and would follow along, but I interceded only to make occasional corrections in their speech and clarify language they came across in the game.
Of course, that's not to say there were not some things I wish I had thought of beforehand. While I did prepare quests ahead of time, I didn't let the students know what they were. As a result, students sometimes had already completed the quest before our evening session. Of course, I had hoped they would get together to play on their own, yet I hadn't considered the consequences. The wise course would be either to tell the students to avoid a certain group of quests, or if they are going to play a great deal, to use a different character. I had also planned on having our students interact with other players in the game. This interaction did not happen as much as I would have liked, mostly because we formed a self-sufficient group by ourselves; therefore, we only had to interact with other players for short periods of time to ask for directions or advice. Next time, the first assignment will be for each student to join a guild at the beginning of the semester, selecting from a set that I will have participated in beforehand. The guild provides a large social context to the game and also provides the students with a great deal of asynchronous communication outside of the game.
I was also caught off-guard by the number of vocabulary-related requests that students made before the gaming sessions. These varied from “emergency commands” they needed during battle to the amusing emotes, verbs that cause the characters to do some kind of expressive animation, such as “wave,” “dance,” “flirt,” etc. I actually created a sheet for them with all of this information, but I should have just provided them with the sites where they could have found the information for themselves. Directing them to these sites may have connected them with some of the sites and social communities that develop around these games as well.
Finally, I wish I had given students more time to reflect on what had happened the previous evening. They were very anxious to tell their often very humorous stories of interacting with dwarves in their limited German with their classmates, but I only let them do so during our warm-up period at the beginning of each class. Allowing more time for reflection would have been a good opportunity for students in the language exchange group and the gaming group to exchange stories. We even could have recorded our experiences in World of Warcraft as a machinima piece to share with the rest of the group.
At the end of the semester I asked the students who had gamed and participated in language exchanges for feedback as part of their course evaluations. Of my eight students, four decided to play World of Warcraft, three opted for the language exchanges, and one did both. Both groups had only positive responses in general, though one student from the language-exchange group expressed frustration about scheduling with her partner. The responses were especially encouraging considering that both groups met for what amounted to additional class hours in the evening during the busiest part of the semester. From the game group, four students said they chose games because it sounded like fun, and one chose gaming because it was less intimidating than meeting a native speaker in person via videoconferencing.
Because commercial games are usually designed for private individuals, obstacles exist to implementing games in educational settings, both when incorporating the gaming software into a lab and integrating gaming activities into a class. However, once these initial barriers are overcome, games can greatly affect the dynamics of a class by focusing students on an immediate and practical application of the knowledge they have acquired by situating them within a virtual environment that requires it. Games are also changing in ways that could further benefit educators. “Serious games” that are designed for education have gained a great deal of momentum in the past year, including their own summit at the Game Developers Conference this year. We are also seeing games increasingly integrated with digital storytelling or interactive fiction. Machinima is becoming increasingly popular as a way to use games as a platform to create stories unrelated to the game itself, and examples of interactive fiction are beginning to blur the lines between literature and games. Game developers are also taking advantage of web 2.0 technologies to build communities and offer more opportunities for collaboration with their games. Game consoles can link to blogs; social networking sites are evolving around digital stories made with games; and software applications are being designed to connect gamers with each other.
For those interested in using games on their campuses, I would recommend starting by installing several examples in a computer lab. When choosing games, keep in mind the concepts you feel are valuable to the students as opposed to looking only at the content of the game. In many cases, you'll be able to modify the content of the game itself or provide students with missing or incomplete information either before playing or afterwards when they are reflecting on the game. Observe the students playing the games and ask them about their experience and for further recommendations. Most importantly, take the time to play the game yourself. With this knowledge you'll be better prepared to decide if and how to integrate a game into a classroom. For further information, be sure to check out Richard Van Eck's article Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless. He has very practical tips in the Implementing DGBL section that are applicable to any subject. The game provides an environment favorable to learning, but getting students to think critically and reflect on the game and their own experiences is where your expertise will be most needed.
Gee, J. 2003. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gee, J. 2004. Situated Language and Learning. New York, NY: Routledge.
Oblinger, E. 2004. Simulations, Games, and Learning. ELI White Paper. http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI3004 (accessed February 28, 2006).
Prensky, M. 2001. Digital Game Based Learning. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Prensky, M. 2006. Don't Bother Me, Mom, I'm Learning! St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.
Purushotma, R. 2007. Communication 2.0. http://www.lingualgamers.com/thesis/ (accessed April 6, 2007).
Van Eck, R. 2006. Digital Game Based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless. EDUCAUSE Review 41 (2): 16-30.
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