Video games are sexy, and they offer a lot of insight into how we can make our classrooms and learning spaces sexy too. What I mean by that is that by applying some of the seduction secrets of video game designers to our teaching and learning, we have the potential to engage our students and ourselves in a grippingly attractive relationship with learning. So, what are those seductive secrets? I'll tell you.
The first secret deals with tools. Video game designers provide their players with tools needed to succeed throughout the game. On top of that, they also provide players with all the time they would like just to get past becoming familiar with these tools and to master them instead. Certainly there are many areas of classroom life where this practice could apply. Instead of giving our students the basics needed to skim by, we need to recalibrate our focus from a breadth perspective to a depth perspective. We need to give our students the best tools available and all the time in the world to master those tools for learning.
Video game designers also understand basic human motivation quite well, something that you would expect teachers to have a better grasp of. With regards to video games, designers have set players up be able to fulfill their human need for autonomy--the need to have control over oneself. Whether a game like The SIMS, Assassin's Creed, Angry Birds, or Minecraft, players have the opportunity to dream, draft, and do as they see fit. In the classroom, we often expect our students to perform a task to our standard with tools that we have prescribed for them to use. There is no creativity in this approach and certainly no room for autonomy to take place. How meaningful do you think this kind of work is to the students we are expecting to do it? Not very . . . at best.
Another secret of video game designers that we teachers would be wise to adopt is noticing what our students are doing and offering them disproportionate feedback when they succeed. Oftentimes, our attention as educators is monopolized by off-task or disruptive behaviors. When we give all of our time to troublemakers, what motivation do students have to behave and perform up to their potential? Catching students doing something good is okay. Disproportionately celebrating students doing good things is even better. Short of coming across sarcastic, make a big deal out of students' successes. Celebrate them with the class. Figuratively blast off fireworks when breakthroughs happen. When we focus on the things we like to see in this way, I would surmise that those things we dislike will either disappear or fail to catch our attention any longer.
Finally, along with celebrating successes, game designers understand the need for people to fail. Not only should we allow our students to fail without criticism or judgement, we should encourage them to fail spectacularly and often. The best learning and discoveries are not made through perfection, but through failure. To use gaming terminology, it's when we "almost die" that we store our greatest experiences to memory. In the classroom, it's when our science demonstration about divergent oceanic plates almost catches on fire that we recall everything about ocean floor volcanoes years later.
Yes, it's possible to make our classrooms and learning spaces sexy. We just need to be willing to embrace those dirty little secrets that the designers of our favorite video games are sharing with us. As any of us will attest, what's the fun in secrets if we can't share them with someone?
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