Learning should be about fun and games in the 21st century

In an article published in January, the American Psychological Association found that “contrary to the conventional beliefs that playing video games is intellectually lazy and sedating, it turns out that playing these games promotes a wide range of cognitive skills.” Now, GamesBeat readers are already the converted and know this, and we certainly don’t need to preach about the link between gaming and skills development — but what if we are talking about our children?

The next generation is made up of ready-made digital mavens who live and breathe technology. It has changed everything: the way they watch TV, listen to music, and communicate with friends. However, the area where technology is only tentatively having an impact is when it comes to learning — one of the fundamental building blocks of any child’s or adult’s future. In a time where gaming encompasses childhood and adulthood alike, a huge opportunity exists to enhance learning through the introduction of video games into the education environment — be that at school, university, or in the workplace.

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When it comes to learning, it’s important to think of games as ecosystems where you develop skills and explore knowledge rather than as another way of delivering content and assessment. This state of thinking means we can engage learners in ways far removed from the current outdated model of education delivery. We can, in short, start to change the way people learn to match the digital age we live in.

Gaming can address the needs and styles of every learner by focusing on 21st century skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, memory retention and collaborative learning. Whether it is a primary school student building a farm to learn about crops or an undergraduate engineer solving oil leaks, a fully interactive learning experience with epic production and the highest quality graphics and sound changes the way we perceive what “learning” is. Making an activity relevant, meaningful, useful, and entertaining is one of the key benefits of a game-based approach to learning.

As with most technology, gaming also produces data. In a learning environment, this provides an enormously rich learning resource. Teachers, professors, and employers can identify data points and metrics, which in turn open the door to methods of measuring someone’s progress and achievement — it is formative feedback in real time. Data reveals the effectiveness of players’ (learners) solutions, the interactions between player roles and disciplines, and levels of collaboration between the players. Game data, therefore, becomes a window on the player’s learning progress — caught in the act of learning.

In the U.K., we have a constant warning siren about the “digital skills gap.” We’re concerned that we could see 1 million vacancies for skilled digital workers over the next three to five years — which if left unfilled could cost the U.K. as much as £2 billion (about $3.2 billion) a year. In the U.S., it’s a similar story — a recent Harris poll suggests that Americans businesses currently bleed $1.3 trillion thanks to workers’ inefficient digital skills.

The U.K. government is taking huge, brave steps toward addressing this issue, but we need to do more. In the biggest change to the curriculum since computing was first introduced in 2000, the study of computing, and specifically coding, is now compulsory across all state primary secondary schools.

However, textbooks laying out the fundamentals of JavaScript are going to do little to inspire either teachers or students. The world of technology is fascinating and fast-paced and all around us. The way we teach it across the world has to reflect that.

Mark Horneff is the managing director of Kuato Studios. He has 20 years experience at major games studios, including Ideaworks and Sony, where he worked on Call of Duty and PlayStation Home.