LDT100: [Archive] World Technologies and Learning (WELCOME)

Video Games and Learning

Video games are one venue that have proven to be powerful learning environments, as noted in How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read. Some, including John Brown and Douglas Thomas who wrote You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired! have even argued that video games teach the kinds of skills that are most important for 21st century jobs--while schools lag behind, teaching archaic information that does little to motivate students.

Watch this video, Games and Education Scholar James Paul Gee on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy, to get a sense of what makes video games powerful in terms of teaching and learning.

Then, watch this video, Professor and Game Designer Katie Salen on Games, Learning, and New Media, to learn more about how design principles from video games inform the design of a school called Quest to Learn.

Gamification and Educational Games

Integrating video games into learning settings, or designing learning settings based on video games is a slippery slope, however.

Read this article on how educational video games just never got things right. Written in 2017, it provides more of an historical overview of "educational" video games, but many of the same ideas apply to the integration of games into learning settings.

The "gamification" of classroom settings doesn’t always go well and there are a number of critics. If you love something like, Kahoot for instance, read this blog post by an educator, It’s time to stop using Kahoot as a whole class review tool, on potential issues.

Two Kinds of Change

We can identify two sorts of change, as piecemeal or systemic. Piecemeal change means tinkering, working on a piece with the hope/expectation that this will change the whole, an idea borne of a basic mechanical notion that social systems are like mechanical systems such as clocks or automobiles. The idea is that each component identified as needed to be “fixed” can be, without huge disruptions. This often fails to work, because people get used to how things are done, and will consciously or unconsciously revert back to the old way of doing things. Instead, we should consider a systemic perspective, requiring a broad, long term view of the system, its problems, and how it works internally and connects externally. An overwhelming and revolutionary task, systemic change can frighten people in the system. Yet though slow and painful, it can be a highly effective process.

Social, Workplace, and School Changes

Social Shifts

Society has changed. The primary modes of transportation, family organization, and business structures have changed dramatically. For example, in the agrarian age, we primarily transported people and goods via horse. Then, during the industrial revolution, society recognized that the horse could no longer serve its growing needs, to say nothing of the problems with pollution from horse droppings. A new form of transportation was essential, and the train fit the bill. These changes were certainly not without painful effects (like job losses for those in jobs made obsolete by new technology), but they followed the needs of the society.

Today, our schools are significantly out of step with the rest of society in preparing students for technological specialization, in the needs of employers, in global competition, and in many other ways. Such social shifts demand that our system of education adapt in ways relevant to the changes in our social system.

Workplace Changes

This brings us to a more careful examination of the changes happening in our society. If we understand the shift from the industrial to the information age, we can begin to see how best to change our schools. For example, the shift in business from bureaucratic organization (bosses directing "underlings") to a more team-oriented approach (employees empowered with decision-making responsibilities) brings with it significant implications for schools. The notion of a teacher-led classroom with “jobs” given to students may mirror a more industrial model of work but may not be effective in today’s information age workplace where far more empowerment is essential than we see in today’s classrooms.

Future Schools

If we begin to think of schools as places where people are prepared for the world of work (a vision I do not ascribe to, by the way), we can start to think about how schools might answer the challenges of the information age. This includes things like continuous progress, without our summer vacations, which seem to put kids way behind and artificially mark their "grades" as progress (first grade, second grade, and so forth). The summer vacation is largely an artifact of the agrarian age, when children were released from school to help with planting and harvest times. Naturally, changing to a school system without long breaks (shorter ones, instead) and one in which students of all ages are in different learning groups allowing for continuous progress (and less stigma attached to remediation) would create a certain amount of pain to the current system. And such a change may not be an appropriate approach to respond to one of the markers of the information age. Nevertheless, dreaming of ways schools can be but aren't right now is one of the wonderful activities of those involved in systems change. Thinking carefully about the possible intended and unintended consequences of our actions is vital to systemic change.

Systemic Change

With a clearer sense of the ways that society has changed and how our schools perhaps have not, we can start to think carefully about what this has to do with systems thinking and systemic change. To clarify here, systemic change is a process of analysis in which a broad or global view is taken so that all kinds of implications can be considered at once. Typically systemic change, unlike piecemeal change, asks the system to change all (or at least many critical subsystems) at once. The process continues and improves as we learn about the process itself, which, within social systems change, tends to focus on shifts in power, encouraging democracy and empowering those typically disenfranchised (such as learners who gain control, responsibility, and initiative associated with their own learning systems).

Basic System Concepts

All systems are nested, with the smaller being part of the larger. To implement a new system, one must understand the interrelationships, the ways that these systems are connected. One particular type of interrelationship is an interdependency, a strong interrelationship implying dependency between the components. So, for example, to field an e-learning innovation we need to understand such subcomponents as communication systems, workforce systems, taxation systems, labor systems, policy systems, and on and on—again, taking a holistic approach. In general, almost all social systems theories advocate for a stakeholder based or community based approach, working with many people involved in the implementation during the design and creation of an innovation. Thus to initiate an e-learning system for training illiterates in London, we would talk to illiterates to find what motivates them, as well as stakeholders, such as those who hire former illiterates, those who work in literacy programs, or literacy advocates, and many others.

Basic to most systems theories is that systems are dynamic, changing continuously, making it difficult to create new innovations for systems that are sometimes unstable. A colleague I work with used to work for Mc Donnell Douglas, an aircraft company, in their military training division (no she wasn't in the military) where she designed training for jet fighter pilots. Designing training for a plane that we were also building was nearly impossible since we didn't yet know the technical specifications. They were literally working "on the fly," trying to create something for a dynamic system, which created untold re-work but was the only way to get the job done.

Advanced Systems Concepts

Many more advanced systems concepts are currently in vogue for research and theoretical writing, including chaos, complexity, bifurcations, and feedback loops. Chaos studies investigate such things as how paint flows out of a can, or how bees behave in hives, or how clouds move through the air—all apparently chaotic systems yet with complexity within that chaos. Complexity sciences take this one step further to look deeper into the complexity of systems. Bifurcations are those moments when a system takes a giant leap forward, one that is not reversible. Such moments exist for all systems, seen easily in history, for example, as in the move into the industrial age or the first flight by the Wright Brothers, when history is changed forever. Some might argue that Steve Jobs' challenge to bring the computer to the masses was one such bifurcation moment.

These moments are interesting, particularly when recognizing IF or WHEN we're in one's midst, since then clues may be discerned as to what may happen next, though the science of systemic prediction is a precarious one. Finally, feedback loops can be confusing and, though an advanced concept, are generally similar to any feedback loop wherein a loop is formed after the sender of a message learns that the message has been received. Of course, beyond the communications realm, we can see how much more complex these loops can be in complex social systems.

Some Final Thoughts

Systems theories are wonderful mind toys. It's great to play with these far off ideas of bifurcation points and feedback loops, but there are some basics to reinforce. First, we need to be careful about what traditionalists may call "systems" or "systems approach." Most systems approaches are linear and step-by-step. The flavor of systems that we're advocating here is not at all about linear approaches. Systems approaches as we define them are NOT about input-process-output models as some in the computer science field have suggested. Thus, we have a different meaning for systems theories then you may have previously understood. Systemic is also different from systematic… systematic is again a linear step-by-step process. Instead, must see systems through the social science lens, which has a much more liberatory framework, a framework that empowers front line users. Ultimately systems thinking is a tool that can sharpen your perspective when implementing e-learning in any context or culture. Looking at things systemically will be an invaluable tool as you work through the activities for this course.

I know this week was a lot of reading. I have two pieces of good news! The first is that this is roughly the longest module in terms of reading, so don’t panic! The second piece of good news is that due to all the reading you have done this week, there will not be any outside readings for this module. Instead, you will be asked to watch two videos linked in the discussion board post for this week, and then respond to a handful of questions once you are done watching them. Your only other activity is a short writing assignment on a systemic problem from outside the United States.