Pedagogy

Virtual educational games can effectively combine fundamental skills with tasks to solve real world problems, establish situations where students must collaborate, innovate and investigate, and enable students to gain insight and understanding that is useful. In particular, we draw on the idea of Transformational Play

 

 

Merely playing a game does not ensure that one is engaged in transformational play. Instead, these games offer something new to learners; unlike any other form of curriculum, these games can offer entire worlds in which learners are central, important participants; a place where the actions of a ten-year old can have significant impact on the world; and a place in which what you know is directly related to what you are able to do and, ultimately, who you become.

Students who play transformationally become protagonists who use the knowledge, skills, and concepts of the educational content to first make sense of a situation and then make choices that actually transform the play space and the player—they are able to see how that space changed because of their own efforts. (See the Worked Example offering hosted by MIT Press).

 

Videogames are a powerful medium that allow curriculum designers to invite youth to become scientists, doctors, writers, and mathematicians who critically engage complex disciplinary content to transform not only a virtual world, but also their own world.

  • The U.S. is facing an educational crisis. We are failing to educate and prepare our students to be competitive in a 21st Century global economy. Globalization is rapidly changing the demands of the workplace; American workers now face competition from skilled workers across the globe and technology is automating mundane tasks. America’s global leadership position depends upon our ability to prepare our country’s workforce to work with others collaboratively, to pool disciplinary knowledge and tools to deal with complexity, and to be innovative problem-solvers.

    Classroom learning today is focused upon memorizing fundamental facts that meet academic content standards established to meet high-school graduation requirements and state exit exams. However, these standards rarely translate into readiness to succeed beyond high school. What children need to know and be able to do in today’s digital age goes well beyond the “three R’s”.

    To help ensure our nation’s global competitiveness, children must evolve their academic skills to include creativity, problem solving and cultural knowledge. We need to support the current academic environment and help our students get back the edge to compete in the global economy. As technologies increasingly saturate daily experience, children need to be able to express themselves fluently using multiple media (e.g., text, video, graphic design, sound), to use those media as they navigate across multiple platforms (such as desktop computers, handheld devices, cell phones, and iPods), and to adopt safe and responsible practices, especially online.

    Digital media has the potential to effectively teach our children the essential 21st Century skills they need. Virtual educational games can effectively combine fundamental skills with tasks to solve real world problems, establish situations where students must collaborate, innovate and investigate, and enable students to gain insight and understanding that is useful. This form of apprenticed-learning enables students to learn to look at and act upon the world in a meaningful way. OPEN’s partnership with Quest Atlantis offers students interactive gaming experiences that teach students essential 21st Century skills. Our 3-D Multi-User Virtual Environments teach students how to:
  • - Use digital tools effectively and safely
    - Think critically
    - Understand complex systems
    - Know about other countries and cultures
    - Participate in collaborative learning communities
    - Invent, create, and design — alone and with others
    - Find wholeness in a “remix” world.

    We believe that videogames are a powerful medium that allow curriculum designers to create new worlds that invite youth to become scientists, doctors, writers, and mathematicians who critically engage complex disciplinary content to transform not only a virtual world, but also their own world.