In 2006, I was hired by a very small company to develop an educational CD-ROM aimed at initiating children to the English language. It turned out to be my best work experience but unfortunately, at the end of it, my boss would not get any more contracts and had to stop his activity. He was then hired by an educational software publishing company called Mindscape and, aware that the educational gaming market would keep developing, advised me to look for a job in that area.

This thriving development has made it possible for education to reach a wider audience and is, as such, an important step forward in this sector.

However, much like Norman's concerns with the educational potential of exhibitions (1993), many have wondered whether the marriage between a purely recreational market and a “serious” one could prove effective.

Games benefits to older population

A recent study from the University of Illinois demonstrated the benefits of a digital-based strategy game on the participants' cognitive functions, thereby countering the effects age had on them: compared with the control group, players showed greater performance on four criteria:

• task switching
• working memory
• visual short-term memory
• reasoning

Importantly, the findings suggest that transfer to executive control tasks partially occured:

 

"Improvements in task switching specifically were correlated with faster game play (...), which suggests that 'learning a complex skill... is related to the amound of transfer to cognitive abilities'"

 

Overall, improvements in cognitive abilities were identified after an accumulated 11 hours of training

Additionally, players showed a slight improvements in one visuospatial attentional task.

 

 

Conclusion

The researchers suggest that more work needs to be done to assess the amount of transfer to typical everyday activities, which would provide further insights into the actual significance of those findings.

Nevertheless, this is very promising, especially when we consider the global trend of the market towards educational games in general and the impact those may have on the public. Likewise, Bransford et al (2000, p. 26) highlight the fact that American students spend only about 14% of their time in school, with 53% of it dedicated to home and community: taking advantage of that valuable time for learning purposes would represent a major way to close the gap between the classroom and students' homes.

Given similar findings in the case of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) patients and suggestions about how virtual worlds such as second life may benefit learning-disabled students, it would now be useful to see if they could be generalised to wider age groups, including traditional learners.

 

The link between playing and identity touched at by Malone, K. L. (2008), who mentions that since playing a DS game, she sees a difference in herself, would suggest that educational games may be relevant to traditional learners too...

References:

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L. and Cocking, R.R. (2000). How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school (Washington, D.C., National Academy Press)

Gonzales, J. (2009). Gaming the brain. The Escapist 183
Retrieved: 27 January 2009. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_183/5633-Gaming-The-Brain

Medical News (2008). Video games may improve cognition in the older population.
Retrieved: 27 January 2009. http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/GeneralNeurology/12122

 

Malone, K. L. (2008). What does your game teach you? In Joystick101.
Retrieved: 28 January 2008. http://joystick101.org/blog/?p=330

McKinney, S., A. Horspool, R. Willers, O. Safie, and L. Richlin. (2008). Using Second Life with learning-disabled students in higher education. Innovate 5 (2).
Retrieved 7 February 2009. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=573

Norman, D. A. (1993). Experiencing the world. In Things that make us smart : defending human attributes in the age of the machine. Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.