I learned about Rhetorical Peaks at the Humanities Gaming Institute I attended last year. To my mind, it’s the most realized game so far made when it comes to trying to duplicate the kind of critical thinking instructors try to teach their students. Thing is, it can’t be played independently; it needs to be played in the context of a classroom, and under the guidance of a professor. It’s a game, still–can you solve the mystery?–but it’s not a game that uses a set of self-governing game mechanics to convey humanities knowledge, or ways of knowing.
Rhetorical Peaks is a study in making games for the humanities, both in terms of lessons to learn and pitfalls to avoid. My reading of it is that it trades immersion and autonomy for classroom-specific goals. My dream is that we learn to make games that don’t have those trade-offs: that they be immersive, autonomous games that teach the humanities’ ways of understanding the world.
NIU-Torcs is a rare example of a college-level mathematics game that allows for deeper learning within the game. Brianno Coller and colleagues developed the game through an NSF grant to help their mechanical engineering students learn numerical methods (Coller & Scott 2009). Students begin the game by learning how to code acceleration and steering using the programming language C++. They then move to making the car move fast without skidding off the road, by calculating numerical roots, solving systems of linear equations, and doing curve fitting and simple optimization. The authors report that students are motivated to keep trying far more than when given these types of problems as meaningless homework exercises. Concept maps produced by the students in both the game-based and traditional classes showed that although measures of low-level knowledge were statistically identical, students in the game-based class had much greater levels of deep thinking, which included being able to compare and contrast methods and link concepts together. In addition, student attitudes about the class had changed – they were more engaged, and more able to recognize the value of the mathematics they were doing. http://www.ceet.niu.edu/faculty/coller/more_information.htm
Ko’s Journey is a math game for middle schoolers. In it, players follow the adventures of a girl who has been separated from her family and must travel across the wilderness. Along the way, she must solve problems using mathematics, including finding the correct proportion of medicinal plants to save a wolf cub, and the correct angle to shoot her arrows. Identity and intrinsic mathematics are key components of the game, and the game tells an absorbing story, which is a component of game play that some theorists feel is essential to deeper learning. http://www.kosjourney.com/
Educators coming together to explore how the principles of games promote learning
Need help with the Commons?
Email us at commonshelpsite@gmail.com so we can respond to your questions and requests. Please email from your CUNY email address if possible. Or visit our help site for more information:
