Recently,
I came across an article titled Why
Games Don't Teach from Ruth
Clark. The article sparked a lot of controversy and debate in the learning
circles, primarily because of its title. Karl Kapp even responded
back to Ruth's article with Games
Teach. And, he quoted various researches to prove his point.
Personally,
I do think that Ruth's views about the value games bring to e-learning actually
make a lot of sense. So far, I haven’t seen many few game-like components that
work for learners. Mostly, in the effort to provide a game-like feel to a
course, we end up adding unnecessary complexity and hampering
learning. Any unnecessary complexity kills the learning experience, and
that's what most of the so-called games do. This view is substantiated by
the experimental evidence provided by Ruth in the section “Beware Masquerading
Your Content in Game Costume” in her article.
However,
the entire controversy sparked by Ruth’s article is also because of the lack of
a formal definition for games in e-learning. What most learning designers call
games are scenario-based simulations with game-based interfaces. And, there is no doubt about the fact that simulations work. What can work better than
experiential learning in a simulated environment, anyway. A simulation teaches
the real-world application and in some ways "looks" like a game.
So, I hold
my view unless I see a game (and not a game-based interface or a simulation) in
e-learning that actually teaches . Do let me know if you come across any.
