Videogame University

The Problem: Online courses are expanding, but students sometimes miss the community-building that happens in a physical classroom. Also, we’re used to using our computers in independent, interactive ways, which can make it hard for students to sustain attention in an online classroom. Full-class discussions are difficult.

The Solution: Using methods honed in videogames, create a vast virtual world where students can explore their interests, learn from teachers and from each other, and earn college credit.

Beginning the Game: Your subscription to Videogame University is paid for this semester, and you can start playing!

The first levels, which are largely automated, take you through the process of creating your avatar, building your house, and meeting your neighbors. Your house is pretty empty right now; you’ll earn decorations as you take more “courses.”

The game takes you through the process of setting your learning objectives, which are displayed prominently in your house. You decide you want to earn a B.A., but you’re not sure whether you want to major in Psychology, Poli Sci, or English.

Like many videogame worlds, you interact in real-time with other players through their avatars. To start, you’ve been randomly placed in a community with 20 other “freshmen.” You chat and get to know them and look through their houses. If everyone in the community makes good progress towards their learning goals, the community as a whole gains extra awards, so there’s an incentive to make sure everyone’s playing regularly and getting help if they need it.

Reward Unlocked: 101-Level Portals Open!

Your 101-Level Classes: You travel through a portal to vast compounds; the equivalent of courses in different disciplines. At the compounds, you wander where you wish, finding interactive puzzles and games which introduce you to the conceptual frameworks of different disciplines.

In your Psych course, you interact with NPCs who are acting out the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and answering some simple questions unlocks a few videos of psych experiments. In your Political Science course, your avatar is swept into a lesson on Marx as you solve puzzles about the means of production. In your English class, you begin an interactive journey where you learn about different theories of critical reading and then apply them to texts.

Reward Unlocked: Group Message Boards Open!

In the Group Message Boards, you can get immediate help on any puzzle that’s got your stumped, read walkthroughs and tip sheets created by other students, and generally experience a heightened level of peer-to-peer learning. All Group Message Boards are moderated by Sages.

The Sages: You encounter many people on your wanderings. While some of the first puzzles are automated by the game, as you gain more and more experience, you will increasingly need Sages to complete your tasks. Sages, in real life, are professors and PhD students with a deep knowledge of the subject and administrator privileges, and thousands of them roam through the game, holding impromptu classes, answering questions, and pushing students to think about their topics.

In the English compound, you meet a Sage who you like, whose schedule is compatible with when you usually play the game. She tells you that you can unlock English 202 if you write her an essay about Jane Eyre using one of the critical perspectives you’ve learned about in the game. In real life, you read Jane Eyre, regularly meeting with your Sage and her small group of followers to discuss and analyze the novel. You write your essay, which is read by your Sage and the rest of the “class.” (It’s fairly common that particularly rich videogame worlds lead to reading and writing outside of the game.) You revise your essay based on their comments, and…

Reward Unlocked: English 202 open!

Evolutionary Biology Knows Best

Problem: Some monkeys live in places with lots of resources and get along.  Some monkeys live in places with limited resources and they’re aggressive and competitive.  Our schools are often firmly in the “aggressive and competitive” realm, and train our students accordingly.

Solution: Use the lessons of evolutionary biology to reform the school system. Encourage pro-social behaviors by rearranging the spaces and messages of an environment to encourage people to act like their best selves.

This is the plan of David Sloane Wilson, Professor of Evolutionary Biology. I heard about this from an NPR interview by Krista Tippett on the show “On Being,” available at onbeing.org/program/evolving-city/4720

Much of his work centers around the ideal city, but he’s got a solution for eduction as well—10 features of productive environments that can be applied to the classroom.

Some of these, we already know are important without evolutionary biology.  The students have got to feel comfortable and safe, we have to reward harder work more (proportional costs and benefits), and there generally needs to be someone in charge, what Wilson calls “monitoring.”  We need to resolve conflict quickly and fairly, punishments should start gently and escalate as needed, and students need some kind of short-term benefit for their education—in other words, it’s hard to be motivated to write a paper tonight when the only benefit is the job they might get in six years. (An open question–did we really need evolutionary biology to know these things?)

Okay, that’s well and good.  The other four features of pro-social school environments are a bit weirder.  Consensus decision making—people have to be a part of how things are run.  Going along with that, there needs to local autonomy for groups, who have to be able to make their own decisions as to how their group runs.  But, with all these groups, you need polycentric governance, or coordination among groups, to make it all work.  And your social unit needs to have a strong group identity and a sense of purpose to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Your Volcano Assignment: You’re heading to your evolutionary biology-based high school science class.  Your whole semester has been organized around the quest to build the largest and most potent baking soda volcano. Your group worked on experimenting with different types and proportions of vinegar and baking soda, creating a need for chemistry research. Another group worked on designing the optimum shape, a group with more of a physics slant. A third group, with an applied science slant, worked on safety procedures and ensuring the minimum safe zone.  The teacher coordinates meetings between groups and provides resources (polycentric governance), but the individual tasks are set by groups and monitored by team members (local autonomy).  Your volcano is going to be set against other science classes (strong group identity, sense of purpose).

At the end of the semester, you trundle out your vinegar, your baking soda, and pour it into your ten-foot volcano, observing the safety precautions from the applied science group. As the volcano explodes upwards to the sky, we reach consensus decision making–because the consensus from everyone is that the volcano is awesome.