Innovation with Educational Technology

First off, let me again reiterate that not all educational games are created equally–so my intention is to provide a peek into the games that I think get the learner interested by encouraging them to learn how systems behave and to learn “content”–by uncovering it, presenting them with both challenge and immersion through narrative.  Although approaches that “show, teach, n’ click” have their place, the aforementioned approach interests me much more.

To that end, I’d like to mention the game, Climate Change, which was produced by the BBC, with support from the Univ. of Oxford.  Climate Change puts the player in role of the President of the EU.  As president, the player has to make policy choices that drive down levels of CO2 emmisions from the year 2000 to 2100.  Throughout the process the play has keep emission reduction balanced with resources such as electricity, water and food, all the while remaining popular with the people.  Let me vouch as someone who’s played this multiple times–it is not easy.

Game creators are the first to admit that although a lot scientific research went into the game, players shouldn’t take the outcome of the game as “serious climate change prediction”.   That said, the game uses climate change data published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)–and the authors provide a most excellent write-up about the science behind the game.

However, climate change modeling is complex, and the purpose of the game isn’t climate modeling.  Rather, the game seeks to help people learn about the factors that cause climate change, and the policies and politics that governments need to wrestle with when making decisions that affect these choices.

To that end, I found myself in the middle of yet another learning experience.  Even though part of my background is in science, knowledge of science alone is insufficient to solve the problem.  Every policy decision that I made in the game (players can choose from national, trade, industrial, local, and household policies), there were consequences that affected food production, power consumption, and water availability.  Incidentally, the policies that I mentioned were all taken from written government policies (with a few exceptions in end-game play–e.g. mining the moon).  Add to this the need to be favored in the electorate, and having to “answer” to the UN on setting and meeting CO2 emissions standards, I found myself with a real challenge.  For instance, supporting policies on biofuels / alternative energies alone didn’t solve the CO2 emissions problem since implementing those policies has costs which must be addressed.  Taxing the public (either through a fuel tax, emissions tax or general tax) has the consequence of increasing income, but at the expense of popularity.  For each policy option, the public either strongly approves or disapproves (and everything in-between) your decisions, and if your popularity plumets too far, you’re ousted from office.

At the end, you’re given a screen that tells you how well you did in each of 3 broad areas:  CO2 emission reduction, Wealth (of the EU), and Popularity.  Basically, I found that by prioritizing CO2 emission reduction to meet the standards proposed by the game, my country’s resources took a huge hit–and thus basic public services in some cases fell apart–as did my popularity.

It’s worth saying that Climate Change is both an informative and fun game.  Let’s just say that I’m glad that being the one responsible for leading climate change for real isn’t my real job.

As one of my favorite profs in the College of Ed @ UT, Dr. Northcutt, told me my first semester back in grad school, “It’s not about the answers folks, it’s about the questions…” So, how do we know that the questions raised by these games are valid?  Who decides the rules that drive these games?

By definition, the job of persuasive gameplay is to guide us towards a particular viewpoint or otherwise serves a social objective, both by direct interaction as well as through publicity.  By definition then, the organization that sponsors the game–in many cases not the game design firm–gets to define the rules of gameplay.  For instance, in Ayiti, the game on Haiti was designed by kids in the Global Kids Initiative, who used Unicef resources inform them about background content for the game.
(source: http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3143.html)

Darfur is Dying was developed in partnership with the Reebok Human Rights Foundation and International Crisis Group.  MtvU held a ‘Darfur Digital Activist Contest’ as a way to encourage student activism.  As a result, 5 students from USC designed the game and worked with experienced aid workers to develop the game.
(source: http://www.darfurisdying.com/aboutgame.html)

So, this begs the question,

In what ways are the issues raised by games such as the ones in these posts valid?  In what ways are they controversial?  Perhaps the games mentioned thus far aren’t that controversial, but what of games such as “Harpooned”?  Harpooned is a game that raises awareness of Japan’s controversial (and not widely discussed in the media) whaling program.  In Harpooned, participants control a whaling ship and get to slaughter whales, offload the carcasses and capture protestors.  Controversial?  To say the least.  Is it right to promote such games?  Or play them?

Some would argue that games like this play a critical role in raising awareness of a tragic issue, and that without such exposure the activity would never be brought to light.  Do the ends justify the means?  Go to the Harpooned website, read the press and decide for yourself.