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教育领域应借鉴游戏化经验以增强学习体验

发布时间:2013-07-08 16:40:30 Tags:,,,

作者:Kevin Miklasz

我对中学时的某堂数学记忆犹新。那时在舅舅的介绍下,我第一次见识到一种新鲜的玩意儿——《魔兽争霸:人类与兽人》,我很快就迷上了这款游戏。我卡在兽人战役的任务3上,连续失败好几次。我的兽人生产速度实在赶不上人类的进攻步伐。在一节数学课上,我的脑海中又浮现了刚刚失败的任务3的地图,所以我开始在算术本上涂鸦。

我画得非常入神,似乎我就是在玩游戏。我画了森林、金矿,标出最方便采集的伐木场和城镇中心的战略位置。我计算了生产率达到战士转换所需以前必须拥有的工人数量。我发现那张地图的关键瓶颈,计划了在哪里和何时设置保护新金矿的防御阵形。金矿是保证我的生产率足以应对人类进攻的关键资源。

Computer-Games-as-a-Tool-for-Education(from gamejournal.it)

Computer-Games-as-a-Tool-for-Education(from gamejournal.it)

然后,铃声响了。我盯着我的笔记本,意识到我终于知道怎么破解任务3了。至于老师在那堂数学课上所说的,我一无所知。一股罪恶感油然而升,似乎我刚刚偷懒或作弊似的。

我是一名游戏玩家。从五岁时父母给我买入第一部任天堂游戏机,我就成为一名游戏玩家了。

但我也是一名学生。毕竟我修满大学课程,拿了PhD。我当学生22年了——几乎与我成为玩家的历史一样长。

我还是一名学习者。奇怪的是,这个身份与学生是不一样的。虽然玩游戏和到学校听课都是学习,但它们是非常不同的两种学习,有时甚至互相矛盾。

后来,我总是很郁闷自己当时居然会产生罪恶感。在数学课上,我做资源的经济分析,并考虑场景的地形,我居然感到羞愧?!应该没有学生会为自己在数学课上学习数学感到羞愧吧?但我并不是以学生的身份学习数学,而是以玩家的身份——这才是我感到羞愧的地方。

这个观念得改一改了。现在,我们已经知道优秀的玩家也能启发我们一些良好的学习方法。好玩家的学习方法与好学生解决复杂问题的方法一样直观。玩家提出的通关教程和游戏网站如WOWwiki就是证据。游戏利用的内在奖励结构,与使学习本身变得有趣的结构相同。我们可以把这些概念归结为“游戏化学习”,这是不仅仅适用于游戏的普遍学习法则。

所有好游戏都是游戏化的学习工具,无论它们是否被贴上教育类的标签。更重要的是,这意味着所有玩家都是学习者。我们要扪心自问的问题不是玩家是否通过游戏学习,而是他们正在学习什么。对于这个问题,我们要考虑的不只是学科的内容,还应该考虑到把玩游戏作为相当于问题解决和系统思考等概念知识和“21世纪技能”。

相反地,学生并不总是在学习。坦白说,学校里的学习并不算一种良好的学习方式,因为学校模式没有体现游戏化学习原则。学校需要更多游戏,但更重要的是,我们应该让更寓教于乐的学习方式进入学校,无论这种学习方式是否来自游戏。

当然,这些都是很抽象的设想。我们应该理论化学校中的学习方法——也就是为这个问题设计另一个解决方案。我设计了最近发布的一款物理模拟游戏《The Fluid Ether》,它体现了针对学校的游戏化学习方式。虽然我们不能把它当作学校学习问题的唯一解决办法,但至少它提供了一种可能。我们需要更多答案。

对我而言,设计这款游戏寄托了我个人的愿望。我多希望在我还是学生时,学校能用它作为教学工具。它是一种能够让我像玩家一样学习的工具,不会让我产生羞愧感。我的这款游戏不是为下一代学生设计的,而是为了弥补我自己学生时代所缺失的学习体验。

所以,在此我倡议:我们应该设计游戏化学习工具,用它们重整学校中的学习模式,最终把玩家、学生和学习者这三个词的内涵统一起来。不要让下一代玩家为自己不是以学生身份来学习而产生罪恶感。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

In defense of games as educational tools

by Kevin Miklasz

I remember a particular math class, sometime in middle school. My uncle had just introduced me to this cool new game called Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and I quickly became obsessed with it. I was stuck on mission 3 of the orc campaign, having lost several times in a row.  My production of orcs just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the attacks from the humans. My recent losses burned the image of the mission 3 map into my mind, so I started doodling the map in my math notebook.

Before I knew it, I was as engrossed as if I was playing the game. I sketched out the forest and gold mines and plotted the strategic placement of lumber mills and town centers to maximize harvest of those resources. I estimated how many workers I’d need to train before my production rate was high enough to switch to warriors. I found the key bottlenecks on the map and planned out where and when I would build defensive formations to protect what would be my second and third gold mines — vital resources needed to increase my production high enough to overwhelm the human camp.

And then the bell rang. I looked at my notes, realizing I knew exactly how to beat mission 3 of Warcraft, but I had no idea of what the teacher discussed in math class that day. I felt incredibly guilty about this, like I had slacked off or cheated in some way.

I am a gamer. I’ve been a gamer since my parents bought me a Nintendo when I was five.

I am also a student. Since I rounded off my college degree with a PhD, I’ve been a student for 22 years — almost as long as I’ve been a gamer.

I am also a learner, which strangely enough is not the same thing as being a student. Both playing games and attending school contributed to my learning but in very different ways that were sometimes at odds with each other.

Later in life, I always hated how guilty I felt that day. Here I was in a math class doing an economic analysis of resource use and taking into account the geometry of a landscape, and I felt guilty about it. No student should ever feel guilty about learning math in a math class. But I wasn’t learning math as a student; I was learning math as a gamer, and so I felt guilty.

This has to change. At this point, we now know for a fact that good games have something to teach us about good learning. They are structured in ways that engage students towards an intuitive understanding of complex topics. Player-created strategy guides or game websites like WOWwiki are testament to that fact. Games capitalize on intrinsic reward structures, the same structures that make learning itself engaging. We can group these concepts under the term gameful learning to characterize them as learning principles that are common in but not unique to games.

All good games are gameful learning tools, whether or not they have an educational label on them. More importantly, this means all gamers are learners. The question we need to be asking ourselves is not if players are learning from games but what are they learning. And we need to take that question well beyond content knowledge to conceptual knowledge and 21st century skills like problem solving and systems thinking.

In contrast, being a student is not always about learning. To put it bluntly, the learning that occurs is schools is often not good learning, as the structure of school does not embody gameful learning principles. We need more games in schools, but more importantly, we need more gameful learning in schools whether or not that learning comes from a game.

Of course, these are all abstract ideas. It’s nice to theorize about what needs to happen in schools; it’s another thing to design a solution to the problem. I designed the recently released The Fluid Ether, a physics simulation game that embodies gameful learning and is targeted toward schools. I don’t think this game is the answer but rather an answer to the problem. We need plenty more answers.

For me, designing this game was personal. It’s the game I wished school had used for learning when I was a student. It’s the tool that would have let me learn as a gamer, guilt-free. I’m not designing a game for the next generation of students. I’m designing for the student experience I missed out on.

So, here’s the plan: Let’s design gameful learning tools, use them to restructure school, and make the terms gamer, student, and learner indistinguishable. Let’s save the next generation of gamers from guilty learning. Who’s in?(source:venturebeat)


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