Video Games for Learning
Course
Games Improve Our Resilience [6:30]
When we play video games, we are slowly improving our resilience. The more we face challenges and overcome them, the more it gives us the confidence, and know-how to approach the next challenge.
When we play video games, we are slowly improving our resilience. There are times when we are faced with challenges that seem like we cannot overcome them. But the more we face them, more importantly, the more we overcome them, the more it gives us the stability, the confidence, the know-how to approach the next challenge, and to look for similarities in the way this new problem looks like ones we've overcome before.
There's a great video game called Rayman. And in the game design itself, it is constantly challenging you to apply what you've learned before, to move forward in the game. It has a really great mechanic that allows you to die and immediately pick back up where you left off, almost without even thinking about it. Losing a life in this game is no big deal. The entire game is focused on you accomplishing the level, you accomplishing the task at hand.
It allows you to become more and more resilient to dying, quite frankly. It allows you to not worry about taking a risk when you try what looks to be an impossible jump, or apply a new skill you learned in a new way, because you know if this doesn't work out, I can immediately try it again. When it does work out, you start to see that you're holding the key to unlock all of the locks that are ahead of you that look like roadblocks.
We often learn more in our failure than we do in our success. That's mostly because we spend so much more time in failure. When we play a video game, we fail 80% of the time. But we keep playing. Imagine what it would be like if we allowed our students to fail 80% of the time in school, knowing that the 20% of the time that they succeeded, they would be soaring when they did it.
Unfortunately, right now, that's just not the way our school systems are designed, our learning environments are designed, but we can get there by thinking more like gamers. There's an observation I've made between the difference between the way the boys in my classroom play video games and the way the girls in my classroom play video games. Perhaps it has to do with failure because it appears that the boys are apt to play games where failure has larger consequences, where the risk, where the investment they are putting in, if you lose it all, then that seems to be something they really like, when it's sort of "make it or break it, I'm going to risk everything I have to accomplish this."
Meanwhile, the girls have a different relationship with failure. They have no problem with restarting, with trying things new, with solving the problem, but the focus is much more on not giving everything up, but applying everything I've gained along the way to solve the next problem. That's sort of just an interesting observation, but it's one certainly that I think applies to the classroom as well. When we play video games, we're not playing one game that's perfect for every single child. Certainly, every learning situation will lend itself better to different individuals in the classroom.
Different games emphasize meaningful failure as well. I love watching, on YouTube, videos of speed runs in games. Speed runs are when people play through a level as fast as they can, trying to get the record time to beat a level. There are speed run videos for my favorite video game of all time, Mega Man 2, in which people play that game, people complete that game. They play it from the opening screen to the end credits in times that rival what it took me to beat a single level when I was first playing that game. But you know what? It's amazing to watch somebody accomplish that. It actually builds up my resilience for playing that game because I see, "Wow, look. I can actually get through all of those traps even faster if I just trusted myself and the game design."
Meaningful failure to a gamer means a lot of things. Failure in a game must feel like there's a possibility of overcoming it. I should say that. We can't just design a scenario in a classroom where kids are going to fail a lot. That would make them feel horrible. They need to be able to feel like there is a possibility of overcoming, but perhaps, they're just not quite there yet.
It's great when students can fail often, but also be allowed to save their work often, save their progress and not have to restart all the way from the beginning. It's sort of giving this opportunity for multiple or unlimited lives, especially in a video game, those multiple lives, those multiple continuous means that I have permission to fail more often and to take greater risks.
So taking what we've just discussed about resilience in games, let's consider what this could look like in your library. When can we let students fail over and over, until they achieve mastery? I saw that happen over and over again when our school was celebrating the Hour of Code, that national celebration, world-wide celebration now, where we are giving all students a chance to code and to understand what coding means and to learn more about jobs involving coding.
A lot of coding is writing code and testing it out and looking for the bugs to patch or fix it. While we're testing out and patching, and trying over and over and over, we become more resilient because we accept that failure is part of the process in order for us to accomplish something great.
So I look for other opportunities in my teaching where I can give students a chance to fail over and over, knowing that all of it is contributing to an outcome that will mean something great to them.
Failure is a familiar feeling and experience for videogamers, who, as Winner describes, spend more time failing at a game than winning or succeeding. The type of failure is "meaningful," which means that gamers sense, anticipate, predict a chance to succeed at some point. This is a critical characteristic to reproduce in a classroom version of giving students opportunities to fail. If students were to just fail again and again, with no hope for success, teachers likely aren't cultivating resiliency. But if students see and experience eventual success after growth, then the stage is set for learning from failure.
Winner describes Hour of Code as a good opportunity for students to experience "meaningful failure." Visit the Hour of Code website (link in Resources below0 to learn about this worldwide celebration of coding. Learning activities are sortable by grade level (pre-reader through 9+) and how-to tips for teachers are provided.
Hour of Code
https://hourofcode.com/us
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Video Games for Learning: Meaningful Failure & Hour of Code." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985417?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0.
Entry ID: 2122887
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Winner, Matthew C. "Video Games for Learning. Games Improve Our Resilience [6:30]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985417?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985417?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0
Entry ID: 1985417