Learning to leverage the enormous popularity of video games to help students excel was the core purpose of two events held recently in Washington, D.C.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Summit on Video Gaming and McKinley High School's "Be the Game" video-gaming summit were meant to demonstrate the pedagogical value of gaming technology, often viewed with skepticism by generations of educators who did not grow up in the digital age. The FAS event focused on the theory behind using video games in the school curriculum, and the McKinley High School summit looked at how to use gaming curricula to engage students and improve their performance.

Gaming theory

At the FAS summit, experts ranging from cognitive scientists for the military to entertainment game producers from Hollywood participated in a range of panels that addressed topics such as research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Experts in pedagogy and game design began the conference by discussing specific attributes of video games that lend themselves to learning applications and went on to examine areas of knowledge and skill development to which game features could be applied.

"The decision environments provided in gaming are great training for all sorts of high-performance teams," said Jan Cannon-Bowers, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida and formerly senior scientist for training systems for the U.S. Navy. "Though gaming provides a good medium for instruction, good instruction must transcend the game."

She went on to give some examples of how research has demonstrated the difficulty of transferring skills learned from gaming for use in other media.

Gaming works, she said, in known domains in familiar formats. That's also how knowledge is built--proceeding from the known to the unknown. The problem, she said, is transferring that knowledge from the game to the real-life scenario, whether it is academics, war, or the corporate office.

"Transfer is a skill," she said. "The goals of a game are diverse. The skills that you are going to leave the game with have to be well-defined."

Cannon-Bowers also noted the importance of a strong narrative to engage the user.

In the game "Discover Babylon," students learn about archaeology while exploring 3-D images of ancient Mesopotamian temple complexes. (photo courtesy of FAS) CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE