Category: Hot Topics – Prior Weeks

Mindful Learning and History

Reading Ellen Langer’s The Power of Mindful Learning, I couldn’t help but notice that the characteristics she described as central to mindfulness were similar to the characteristics that I see as being at the root of historical research. Just as mindfulness is based on “the continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and implicit awareness of more than one perspective,” historical research is based on the continual questioning of preexisting narratives about the past. (Langer, 4) Historians are taught to consider whether the documents and artifacts we explore are littered with either explicit or implicit bias and we also tend to question whether the narratives constructed by previous historians are accurate reflections of the past. (Indeed, we pretty well have to question the narratives of previous historians, because if we took them at their word then there wouldn’t be enough research to keep us all busy.) This line of thought got me thinking about how we teach history.

 

In popular culture history classes tend to be portrayed as an endless stream of people, places and dates. This might be a gross oversimplification but maybe the teachers of history are partially to blame. Outside of methods courses (and graduate school) how often do we acknowledge the contested nature of the narratives that we give our students? How often do we expose our students to conflicting viewpoints about the past and how often do we admit that it is entirely possible that the facts and interpretations we give them may subsequently be proven to be misguided? By taking a mindful approach to teaching history, historians can help students understand the complicated and contested nature of the past. I believe this philosophy of instruction can be useful on a number of levels. First of all, it is a more honest approach than presenting one specific narrative as if it were the only narrative. Second of all, the mindful approach to history can also be applied outside of the classroom. The mindful approach will allow students to look critically at people who use historical narratives to justify current policy and, more generally, it will hopefully help students to think critically about rhetorical arguments in general.

 

I believe that the mindful approach can also help students think about how their own backgrounds and beliefs influence the way that they approach history. For example, my thesis research focuses on how British officials in Iraq developed their ideas about Shi’i Iraqis. Looking critically at British sources, I discovered that officials tended to explain the beliefs and actions of the Shi’i religious leadership in terms of the officials’ own understanding of Christianity, often borrowing terms from Christianity and making comparisons between church-state relations in Europe and church-state relations in Iraq. Naturally, I began to look into the religious backgrounds of the officials I was studying. As I attempted to get a grasp of what these officials believed, I forced myself to step back and I realized that I was thinking about their beliefs and experiences in terms of my own background. Hopefully, this moment of self-reflection will help me to avoid reading my own experiences into the subjects that I am studying. By encouraging my students to develop this sort of meta-cognitive process, I can hopefully help them to see how their own influences shape the way that they view both history and the world. I am curious to see what students from other disciplines had to say about mindful learning and the rest of this week’s reading.

WEEK 4: MINDFUL LEARNING

In reviewing the material for this week I began with the TedTalk by Sir Ken Robinson. His interpretation of the no child left behind law and the comparison to other European education systems was insightful, and listening to his discussion resonates with other critiques of the standardized testing approach used in the USA.  I certainly agree with most of his points, that our current approach to the educational system can be improved and that those in the education system need to be considered in a higher regard. What hit me the strongest was his identification of the three things that humans need to flourish that the educational system contradicts with standardization; that we as humans are,

  1. Naturally different and diverse
  2. Naturally curios (Natural learners)
  3. Creative

I think we as future professors have a responsibility to understand these characteristics and be able to identify methods in which students can learn the material. One of the points I took away, is that we can teach all we want, but if there is no learning happening then we are not meeting our objective. One of my favorite quotes was Sir Ken Robinson’s statement that Education is not a mechanical system its a human system. And in an In an organic system, life/learning is inevitable under the right conditions.

In A New Culture of Learning CULTIVATING THE  IMAGINATION FOR A WORLD  OF CONSTANT CHANGE By Douglas Thomas, the embracing change chapter was in my opinion very accurate. In the discipline of Civil Engineering, I feel that we are now more than ever required to become multidisciplinary to not-only solve current issues but also be more efficient in solving traditional problems. For example, the field of transportation engineering is seeing a significant change in adapting to new available technologies and preparing or anticipated future technologies. Thus adapting to and understanding the constructs of new technologies that will soon be available requires an understanding of the discipline that are generating them. In my opinion, for transportation engineers to remain relevant in the incoming future we must have a strong understanding of our own discipline, but also in the multidisciplinary, open minded and remain informed of the fields of electrical, computer, mechanical, statistical and machine learning fields. In my opinion having the ability to be open minded to change certainly opens up many opportunities and abilities to pick up new skills useful for your current discipline and make yourself of higher value to the organization that you represent.

The paper by Dr. Langer, brought forth the idea of mindfulness. I certainly agree that being mindful at the task at hand is necessary for learning and also for work tasks or general tasks. If we are not mindful, we may not even be able recall taking part in whatever task or action we were involved in. Personally, I feel that we need to balance our day between mindful and mindless activities. In a research setting, mindfulness is extremely important as we are in what I refer to as sponge mode, aware of what we are reading and truly trying to understand what we are involved with. Mindlessness is also nice when a repetitive task is being taken on, or during a leisure activity or exercise and just gives your brain some time to relax.

Um, Permission to Rebel?

“With organic systems, if conditions are right, life is inevitable.”

Equal parts comedian and educationalist, Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley,” has a serious—though, too, seriously optimistic—message: We’re all humans. We’re all organic. We, in the United States, are not setting up our students to learn. There’s a solution to make our system better.

As humans, we’re born to be curious by nature; and such innate curiosity is what makes humans so advanced, as curiosity is, in Robinson’s words, “the engine of achievement.” Likewise, however, it’s also been an “achievement” of the U.S. to “stifle that ability” to be curious at all. Many of our (mine, included) posts these past couple of weeks have touched on students’ (and our) desire to check the boxes in school. It’s what we’re taught to do, in fact, regardless of the reality that the desire to mechanically move from task to task is not what we’re drawn to do; it’s what we’re compelled to do; it’s a method of self-protection.

This rings true already in these first few weeks of me teaching the new incoming class of freshmen. Have my students come to me—in-person or over email—to discuss the assigned readings, to collaborate on exploring one of their writing assignments, to consider alternatives to their approaches? Nah. But how many questions have I received along the lines of Will we have a final exam or How many pages does this paper need to be or Will you ever quiz us or Could I receive extra credit this semester if I __ or Will we be downgraded if the MLA isn’t perfect?

As an educator, passionate about the content I’m teaching, when asked these questions—especially when asked in the middle of a lesson—I’m thrown off, I squint my eyes, I study the context, I self-question, I…I’m like…what?

Okay, okay. I can’t fault my students. I, too, am a recovering perfectionist and can strongly empathize with students’ fear over missing a detail. I’ve had teachers who’ve downgraded me for not adjusting my page-number font to Times New Roman and who’ve threatened to not accept a paper if it were a minute late. Those are misinformed, troubling and dangerous methods of “teaching.” Who are those practices helping?

In his talk, Robinson credits the No Child Left Behind Act for being part of the problem in teachers’ and students’ conforming approach to education. How, after all, are teachers and students going to teach and learn creatively when existing within a system of conformity that calls for standardized testing, for narrowing the focus on STEM disciplines rather than teach them in conjunction with a broad curriculum that includes and fosters talents in arts, humanities and physical education as well? How can we foster curiosity when teachers are not supported to teach creatively? When our system is set up for the antithesis of individualized teaching and learning? When we’re not attributing a high status to the teaching profession? When we’re giving the power to call the shots to legislators without any education in the field of education?

Again, to feed curiosity, we must teach creatively, and in order to teach creatively, we must support our teachers. After all, as Robinson says, teachers are “the lifeblood of the success of schools.” But, as we know, teachers don’t receive the treatment they’re due.

What especially troubles me now as a GTA and student is to see this system play out at the college level. Growing up with my father as a middle-school teacher who received low pay, who had to purchase his own supplies for his classroom, who brought breakfast to feed his kids (many of whom were below the poverty line and, likewise, not being properly supported), who protested in the state capitol when our governor (who does not even have a bachelor’s degree, himself, and who later felt empowered enough to attempt to run for president) decided to gut (and succeeded in gutting) teachers’ unions in Wisconsin, I was raised with the expectation that our public school teachers would continue to be treated like dirt (because, apparently, they can be), and assumed that helpless children would continue to be subject to the repercussions of the government’s mistreatment of teachers.

College educators, though…their conditions couldn’t be the same. We’re in places of higher education. Campuses saturated with knowledge and respect for those that promote it.  

Nope. Look at the number of GTAs who are thrown into teaching without being given any support beforehand. Look at the GTAs, like me, with 2-2 teaching loads, entire responsibility of classes’ syllabi constructions, of creating daily calendars, of giving daily class instruction, of grading, of corresponding with and supporting students…and, oh, who also have to take a full load of classes and publish and write theses and dissertations.

I am part of the norm. And while, comparatively, I should be grateful for my stipend that lets me cautiously live, I should also point out that this treatment—for me, for any GTA, for any teacher at any level—does not encourage best teaching practices. Quite the opposite. It’s burnout.

I can’t help but connect Robinson’s talk to Ellen J Langer’s The Power of Mindful Learning in which she discusses our culture of “mindlessness”—of entrapment in old categories. That’s what’s happening in education, no? In our treatment of educators? Of students? Our education system as of now is one that does not encourage alternatives, that does not open itself to continuous creation of new categories, openness to new information, and implicit awareness of more than one perspective. In a world marked by doubt and difference, why are we not teaching in a conditional, context-dependent way that values uncertainty? Or, the better way to ask this, as Langer teaches, is to ask: How can we teach in a conditional, context-dependent way that values uncertainty?

“Mindless learning,” Langer states, “ensures mediocrity.” Instead of keeping to this system, we must rebel against education myths that currently rule our system, that “undermine our true learning…stifle our creativity, silence our questions, and diminish our self-esteem.”

I’m standing by my will to teach my students the art of rebellion.

A student of mine said to me last week that, even though the author we were reading used four exclamation marks for one sentence, she, of course, couldn’t do the same in her own writing for class. In response, I asked, “Why not?” to which she responded nonverbally, cocking her head in a BUT GRAMMAR RULES! look of confusion. “Keep playing with your piece,” I said. “I can be convinced that four exclamation marks can be appropriate sometimes.”

I’m sticking by my message. I won’t standardize my students, just like I won’t passively allow for keeping our system of education—at all levels of learning—at its current state.

What does it mean to learn in a “mindless context”?

Image result for mindless learning

When I was doing my master’s degree at VT, I had to conduct a real experiment on the Smart Road at VTTI. The experiment was intended to evaluate the human-vehicle interaction when driving an autonomous vehicle. We had 32 participants that they had to drive the autonomous car several times, passing a signalized intersection. The autonomous vehicle has the ability to manage and communicate with the traffic signal without any input from the driver and thus the vehicle will decelerate, stop, and accelerate by its self. All the participants were told to not react when getting close to the intersection. Interestingly, I had a participant who had a hard time to interact with the autonomous vehicle. Many times, she presses the break when seeing the traffic signal is red although she was required to not touch the break nor the gas peddles. Of course, when the participant presses the gas or break paddles, our experiment would collapse, and we had to repeat it. It took her a while to break this habit and start passing the signalized intersection when it’s red without touching either the break nor the gas peddles.

Think about the previous example and try to generalize it to many things we have learned in our life On a daily basis, we do many tasks without a second thought. We have become computers that are controlled by codes and behave in a predefined way.

In the educational system, this approach of learning leaves no room for accommodating any new change that might happen in the future. Even worse, students get criticized if they deviate from the traditional way and come up with their own approach. Even if their own approach seems to be longer or non-optimal, they should be appreciated for thinking out of the box and come with a different way, they should be appreciated for taking the brave and confidence and think differently.

Back in the 1990s, there was a woman who is very professional in cooking fish. One day, she was asked by one of her friends to teach her cooking, so she went ahead and started grabbing the ingredients and her friend was watching. At the first step of preparing the fish for marinating, she cut the head and tail of the fish and put them together into one plate. Quickly, her friend interrupted her, asking why did you do that? Simply, she said: “I don’t know! This is how I was told!” Then, her friend asked her who told you? She replied: my mom. Then, her friend insisted to go and ask her mom! they went together to her mom and asked the same question: could you please cook fish for us? She welcomed them and started preparing the fish and likewise, she cut the fish into three pieces as her daughter did. Now, both of them asked her: why did you do this? She replied: “This is how I learned from my mom (the grandmother of the daughter)”. This makes all of them eager to know the hidden reason! They were excited to figure out how it related in making it delicious fish. Three of them decided to go and ask their grandmother. They knocked on the door and found her sleeping on her bed. They gently asked her to cook for the fish, and the grandmother was surprised by this unexpected request but she had no choice but to do it. She did the same thing by cutting the fish into three pieces: head, tail, and the rest. Now, all of them asked her: why did you do this? She simply replied: “my plate is too small and cannot fit the whole fish so I had to cut it into three pieces”!!

Now, let’s think, how many times we were taught things/steps that are not part of the learning process? How many times the lack of tools in the class forced and boxed us into a single view? How much time we could have saved if we go on our own way and find the optimal path?

Personally, I think the problem happens because of the way that teachers approach.  In undergrad school, teachers intend to teach in detail, leaving no room for students to show their creativity or individual differences.  They teach in a way makes them think this is the only way to solve this problem. As grad students, when writing a paper and submit for a peer-reviewed journal or conference, we usually get criticized for using an “absolute language” but when we read books, we find they are written in a way that enforces us to believe them without a single doubt! How could we accept to publish books in an absolute language but not journals or conference papers?! Why do we think books are more trustable than papers although these scientific papers could be published as a book chapter? How could we build a fairer educational and research system that doesn’t favorite some people over others?

Un-expecting the Expected

This semester, I’m teaching a class called Principles of New Media. It’s part of a cluster of three courses prescribed to all incoming freshmen who wish to pursue a major within the school of visual arts. One of the goals of PONM is to establish a baseline proficiency in several computer programs that are used extensively in upper level art and design courses.

As technologies are apt to do, these programs are in a constant state of mutability. From year to year, changes are implemented to update their functionality and interface in pursuit of optimization. This creates a learning environment analogous to the description provided by Thomas and Seely Brown in Chapter 3 of A New Culture of Learning. As an educator, it’s challenging to introduce students to these tools knowing that their imminent restructuring is liable to render the specifics of my lessons obsolete. To best prepare my students to use this software in the future, I must be mindful in how I teach them in the present. It requires an approach that acknowledges the fluid nature of digital tools. Teaching with this in mind de-emphasizes the need to master a specific tool and places more importance on cultivating students’ ability to determine what it is they want to do. For example, rather than motivating an assignment through mastery of the specific functionality of a program, instead prioritize the students’ ability to think through the goals of their project, identify the skills and tools they will need to realize those goals, and use my lessons help them feel comfortable working with technology. Importantly, that comfortability must transcend the specifics of any particular tool or method that I demonstrate in the classroom. The reading by Langer showed how something as simple as the language I use to describe and explain these tools can have this effect. Using mindful language can open the door to finding creative solutions and facilitate students’ ability to adapt to changing technologies. Going forward, their ability to do that is much more important to their success than any particular mastery they could gain from my class.

Another challenge centers around expectation – specifically my expectations as a teacher. There is implicit bias in the programs that we use on computers and other devices, built in to their functionality and interface by the people that created them (despite whatever efforts may have been made otherwise). Similarly, as a person who is (in theory) familiar with the capabilities these tools, when I assign a project that requires the use of a particular software, I inherently hold an expectation for what the result of that assignment will be. Undoubtedly, this informs the way I teach, regardless of whether I consciously acknowledge this preconception or not. So, how do we as teachers disengage from our expectations in a way that is still dutiful to our obligation to share our knowledge without impinging on our students’ creativity? Once more, I think the article by Langer is useful in addressing this question. Being mindful of how I teach digital tools directly affects how creative students are when they use them. Teaching students how to use tools in a mindless manner will lead to work that meets expectations but will never generate work that is unexpected.

In some fields, expected results may be a good thing, but in art, the opposite is generally true. Art that shows us something we don’t expect tends to hold our attention longer. It changes our perspective by subverting something familiar and providing it with new context. I believe that this is more important than mastery of any particular skill or technique and imparting this idea to my students likely begins with how I approach my lessons.

Week 3: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

“Ironically, many are unhappy with an educational experience that has only rewarded them… These students have all been tested, tried, and found to be worthy of extreme praise. What does it mean when such an intelligent person gives the wrong answer?”

-Ellen Langer

 

So… when Ellen Langer listed music lessons as one of the places where limiting, hobbling mindsets are cultivated, I was a little piqued. I’d taken music lessons for years and felt a certain time-tested loyalty to The Music Lesson as pedagogical practice: I was accustomed to the rigor, rigidity, and self-discipline (or unhelpful, unhealthy self-criticism), the type-A personalities, the minefields of politics regarding everything from where one sat in an orchestra to how the music was played, and I paused for a moment and realized that this is precisely what Dr. Langer was talking about in her book, The Power of Mindful Learning.

In this book, Dr. Langer pushes back against conventional wisdom about education as well as conventional wisdom itself. Despite the fact that I have learned a great deal about imagining things, places, and people complexly, and despite my rigorous humanities training and the strong emphasis it placed on multiple perspectives, ambiguities and, iconoclastic takedowns of master narratives and Eurocentric models of everything from history to art to music to education, I am still trapped by what Dr. Langer refers to as mindless learning. Both in and out of the practice room, I do things every day simply because “that’s the way they’re done”, or “every other way is wrong”. This is especially ingrained in music: there’s only one correct way to hold a cello bow–all other ways are not only wrong, but could trigger a career-ending injury and subject yourself to a lifetime of “bad habits” (If I had a nickel for every time I heard that phrase in my lessons, I’d be a wealthy woman); the best way to learn technically-demanding passages in a piece is to drill-drill-drill until it’s branded onto your brain and you can play it without a second thought.

Let’s re-examine that, shall we? The goal is to “play it… without a second thought.” As a traditionalist, I can safely admit that I agree with a lot of the conventional wisdom offered by my many teachers (even the ones whose harsh critiques made me cry and quit playing for years at a time), but I do worry about the future of music practice and education when the goal is to learn for the sole purpose of not having to think about it ever again. Just think about the implications of that for a second, and you’ll be concerned, too.

Embracing Change In the 21st Century

It is evident that our current teaching model is based on a presumption of stability, and continuity, and progress in a controlled environment. In today’s internet environment, the production and delivery of information or content are constantly changing and evolving. This is in contrast with the twentieth-century education environment, which as Thomas and Brown rightfully […]

How we learn? does it help?

How we learn? Some years earlier, many answers would be: “just from lecturers in classes, or from lab trainers”.

Such responses are not valuable anymore except in very rare cases which I believe are not involved in higher education. I think that educators and learners involved in higher education worldwide are all experiencing networked learning in both of its forms: in connection with other human beings or in relation to learning resources accessible to them or the ones they have believed are worth to be looked at.

As many would argue, that is a good because it can help learners be at the same page intellectually which to my view can result into more equal opportunities such finding jobs, economic conditions, and social live in places where there are many social, economic and cultural issues. In other places, the Net has lessened the tasks to students in non-English speaking countries. For instance, students in African French speaking countries some years earlier struggle to read and get what they want from and English text books they would find in some libraries or have a hard time have some French books that were not sold in their countries. Now they have more ways to access those resources. Though the web, they can google translate article and books, make some orders online and get them via their local postal services or services such as DHL, UPS, FedEx which are now present in some of those places.

However as there are many resources out there in the Web with different accessibility, having learners to be at the level can be challenging and worst if there is no guidance but only them interacting on their own with the materials which they have access to. In regards to this fact, one might have the following questions among many others.

How to access the best resources out there?  Are we using them in a best way and with ethic? Are the resources we have access to credible enough?

To the last question, I think the response will depend on our way of thinking which in turn is related to our culture, background social environment and experience as explained in the article what “Video Games Have to Teach Us”. t

Such questions are not raised in the case of a given course taught by an instructor even though at an individual level some preferences (face-to-face interaction, online course) can occur based on different learning styles. In such cases, thanks to the efforts of teachers who care about the impact of their teaching on their student future and who manage to do their best, each student can always find his or her path. We have the example of this wonderful and inspiring teacher in Jean Lacoste’s teaching innovation statement who has redesigned her course for the reason she has explained in these terms: “I wanted each option to support a specific learning style”. Her determination and the steps she took have resonated with her students and have led to considerable achievements which I think should be the dream of all educators.

To have technology or to not have technology, that is the question.

Engaging the imaginations of digital learners has been an interesting endeavor for me to learn and think about this week. I have gone back and forth numerous times about where I stand on this concept of digital learning. On one hand, I think it creates an avenue of being able to be creative in how you facilitate your class and break down barriers of access for students. On the other hand, as someone that has sat in a classroom before, it’s not uncommon to see your fellow students “abusing” technology, aka watching the person in front of you watch episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.

Personally, I know that I have a bias sometimes regarding incorporating technology into my practices. I know I am very susceptible to being distracted by my phone or laptop and I can impose that bias on others. In my graduate assistantship role, I supervise 13 student staff members and during my weekly staff meetings, I have them put away any laptops or cellphones if they are not involved directly in an activity we are doing. I just feel like the second cell phones are out, it opens up for distractions.

Similarly, to what the Anya Kamenetz article talks about how that one teacher would walk into a room and just see all the students on their phones and not engaging with each other, I have seen this as well. If you do not have phones allowed, it can facilitate conversation between individuals faster I feel than if they did have them out. I feel that we can learn so much from others when we are just in community and engaging with each other.

On the other side of if technology should be in the classroom, I see many valid points and reasons it can be effective and should be implemented. The Anya Kamenetz article talks about how if you make a total ban of technology, if a student has a learning disability, it can unintentionally “out” them if they are using technology. As someone that does have a sibling who has a severe learning disability, I know how important learning assistive devices can be in the classroom. As well as how it can feel to not feel like you have agency in your choice of disclosing to others if you do in fact have a learning disability. It is personal information, and you should  feel obligated to inform everyone you are in a class with unless you want to.

As well as the article talks about how people in industry believe that technology can be the way of the future for the classroom. They made an interesting point along the lines of if they are using it, why not figure out ways to effectively incorporate it into the classroom. I feel that using technology should be intentional and well thought out so that you do not just spend every class trying to get the technology to work or explaining how to use the technology every time. I believe that as time goes on, we are going to keep moving towards being a technological society so how can we use technology effectively in the classroom? I would be interested to see studies that look at various online methods to see what has the best results. I feel that I need to do more research on this.

I thought it was interesting to note in the article that with the technology boom, that they reference apps that can block technology for students while they are trying to do work. I think this shows the pull technology can have on students while they are trying to be productive. I know in my undergrad, my roommate used a website that would block her from social media sites for however long she set it so that she would not get distracted by the internet while she was doing her schoolwork—how ironic that technology was both the cause of the problem and the solution to the problem.

How do you feel about technology in the classroom? Have you ever had it implanted really well in a class you’ve taken or do you feel the impact is mostly negative? I am interested in learning others perspectives on this matter.

Engagement and Intellectual Development – Insert Coin to Play

I am a gamer.  I am an educator.  Though I consider myself a learner in all things I do, I never took time to consider the intersection of those two identities.  In fact, I intentionally made the decision to keep the two separate.  As a child, I spent plenty of time in front of the latest Nintendo console, but when I went to college, I opted not to bring a console with me.  I don’t regret that decision.  As a first-year student, I saw a hall mate move off campus, back to his parents’ home since League of Legends became such a distraction that his academic performance suffered.  As a professional in residence life, I still see students struggle with time management, not allocating sufficient time to study due to multiple late night rounds of Fortnite.

Hence, it felt a bit odd to read and reflect on the educational value of gaming.  However, the software that taught math and reading skills (the Jumpstart K-5 series), the software games that provided cognitive challenges (the Pajama Sams and Freddie Fishes), and even the 3-D platform games of the Nintendo 64 (Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64) all challenged me to think and explore as a kid.  Eventually, I delved more into strategy RPG games (Pokémon and Fire Emblem), but even with this change, as I grew up, games started to feel less educational, and I doubted that games could ever be tools of learning, offering a mindless distraction instead of an intellectual challenge.

My first thought about what might have caused this shift away from learning was simple: strategy guides.  At first these were books my parents would purchase that essentially gave a written description of how to beat a game to 100% completion.  More recently, they come from a simple google search.  However, the strategy guide itself was not the problem.  The real reason these games fail to challenge me intellectually is that they are linear; they essentially have one set of steps that is followed to win.

The story from “Teaching in a Galaxy Far, Far Away” in Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown’s A New Culture of Learning Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change challenged me to consider learning from games differently.  The game mentioned provided a truly interactive experience where students collaborated and exchanged ideas to learn more than they otherwise would have from a lecture.  With results like that, it becomes difficult to argue that games have no educational purpose.

After considering, I see video games as a solid means of engagement, a medium that entices its participants to continue playing.  While engagement is a factor in effective learning, it does not guarantee learning.  A game can engage in the way that Thomas and Brown described, but it can also keep a student up all night and away from learning.  I think what determines whether a game supports learning is whether or not the challenge of that game is consistent with (or just slightly above) the player’s level of intellectual development.  Thinking back on my own experience as a gamer, I consider William Perry Jr.’s 1968 theory of intellectual and ethical development, which characterizes the meaning-making process into the developmental categories of dualism, multiplicity, and relativism.

Dualism is rooted in a way of thinking in dichotomies.  There is right answer and a wrong answer.  The games that challenged me as a child posed structured problems that were solved by dualistic thinking.  They were linear with essentially one correct way to win, and the strategy guide could provide the single correct answer.  As a kid in the stage of dualism, these games provided sufficient challenge that I felt I was learning.

Moving forward from dualism, there is multiplicity and relativism, moving from that state of dichotomies to seeing the value in different views and solutions (multiplicity) to distinguishing some solutions are better than others depending on the context (relativism).  From Thomas and Brown’s example, it became clear, that more open-world, collaborative, and competitive games could actually spawn this type of thinking.  Players do not face structured problems with one answer but can continually work to collaborate and generate new solutions depending on what they presently face in the game.

I also think that some observations from how some players approach video games parallel issues that students face in learning.  Even when a game is less structured with no set solution, it can be approached dualistically.  I think of something like Pokémon since it’s familiar to me, but I believe it can apply elsewhere.  There are several online communities – Smogon and Serebii are two examples – centering around the video games series where experts discuss strategies that involve extremely high level thinking.  That conversation is an impressive example of collaborative learning, but many users then copy the strategies of experts without considering the thought process behind them or critically evaluating the strategies.  On one hand, it’s incredible that so much knowledge is available to the average player, but it’s unfortunate that players lose out on the experience of coming up with their own strategy and instead engage in the dualistic practice of subscribing to one expert’s opinion.

This becomes more problematic when it’s not about Pokémon and the Smogon online community, but instead about science and Chegg.  It seems great that we can provide students with ill-structured problems and that they have an online community where they can discuss solutions in a way that encourages collaborative solutions and relativism in their thinking.  However, if this “conversation” simply involves experts contributing solutions, students aren’t actually learning.  

Hence, considering video games a means of learning has provided me a few points to ponder:

Though video games are one medium that can bring about engagement, they are not always the best solution.  What other methods can we use to create truly engaging learning experiences?

A game is only valuable if it challenges players to think at or beyond their current stage of intellectual development.  It’s an important consideration in any educational method.

While the exchange of information and ideas is essential for collaborative learning (about Pokémon or academic subjects), it can result in experts teaching solutions that reinforce a tendency to subscribe to dualistic thinking.  How can we ensure that students begin thinking in stages of multiplicity and relativism?

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