Can video games Teach?

I think it's a really fun and fairly difficult game. There are about 10 different tools that you use to operate. In the beginning, the nurse tells you what to use when, but as the game goes on, you need to just figure it out for yourself. You're working under a time limit, and presicion with the stylus is crucial. As each operation gets more challenging, complications arise and you have to be able to think quickly and figure out what to do and what to do it with, sometimes in a spilt second. Just like in the real ER. Or not. But it got me wondering, could a game like this be created for students in medical school? A game based more closely on real techniques and procedures? Obviously, working with a stylus and working with the real thing is completely unrelated, but could it perhaps teach quick thinking, proper instrument use, methodology? Could a game be developed to teach students in the beginning stages of learning techniques?

Crazy enough, as I pondered these questions, I picked up the old Harper's Magazine for some intellectual-like reading, and what was the first article I came across? "Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the Age of Video Games," in which two video game enthusiasts and two teachers discussed whether or not video games could teach literacy. They discussed plenty of different video games, like SimCity, Grand Theft Auto, Typing games, UltimaOnline, etc. What they ended up deciding was that in order to teach a game would need a kind of interiority, a kind of humanity that is now impossible in video games. They are about external systems and rules. In learning, there are rules and there are times to break those rules to make strange situations work, or to make something more human (for example, breaking "creative writing rules" on purpose to make the piece work in a new way). Games could easily be made to teach grammer, but to teach someone to truly write would be a different story (I made a pun!).

The panel did have some ideas to get around the limitations of the video game. One was a Wikipedia type of format. For example, in a classroom, students would write a story together, which would encourage making changes or additions that would improve the overall effect, and then together the class would somehow rate who ended up making the most valuable addition and they would win somehow. It could also be something similar to Second Life, the online network environment, where when at one time there was a huge problem with someone building huge buildings on tiny plots of land and blocking the views of the big houses near it. Many Second Lifers were angry, and got together as a community to talk about whether there should be rules about buying tiny plots of land between larger plots, a sort of social contract. Human interaction is important when making decisions, especially when one is learning. Otherwise, how does one know if those decisions were good ones?

They talked a lot about how in order to be a good writer, it's important to have read good prose, which they decided would be vital in truly teaching literacy through video games. The idea of a mystery, where the clues can be extracted from classic texts was generally agreed upon, something like (unfortunately) the Da Vinci Code, in which a mystery came about though famous paintings and historical texts.

So when I think again about teaching medical students basic procedures, I can see how the idea of teaching literacy applies to this. I supposed a game could be made to teach very very bare essencials, to get a student used to using an array of different tools and working under pressure, but in the end, a video game might have trouble teaching a student why those tools are used, how to diagnose a patient with symptoms that are not obvious, how to deal with complications, and how to actually work with guts and stuff (At least, while still being part of playing game. Obviously there could be on-screen text, but that's just what it would be, text, which is not the same as learning from a video game). And even in medical school (which I've never attended, so this is just my guess) nothing beats interaction with a real teacher, to ask strange questions, to understand the humanity of being a doctor, of hearing other classmates opinions, to have a chance to argue and discuss, which is something tradition video games can't provide, but with the age of a different kind of gaming (Games like Trauma Center, Guitar Hero, Brain Age, Second Life, Feel the Magic: XY/XX, the Sims, etc.) really starting to get some notice, could start to be possible in the future.

I really like the idea of learning from video games, because some people just love video games, regardless of whether they're learning or not. I mean, I'm still playing Brain Age everyday. I'm not really learning, more like exercising my brain, and after awhile it's sort of tedius, but I can't stay away from the daily self competition of trying to beat my last score. But you can't just put lots of reading and instructions in video games unless it's Part of the Game. Which I think is the biggest challenge to game developers who want to teach something through a game. I think it could be especially fun for kids with math, because, let's face it, math is kind of boring and doesn't really require a lot of instruction or human interaction. A fun interface, like, uh, robots that you have to power up by solving math problems and then use the army of robots you powered up to kill, uh, an evil, ummm, aardvark. But you can only win if you solve enough problems correctly and make your robot army big enough.

Damn, I should be in the gaming business.