Joel Foreman’s article “The Next Generation: Educational Technology Versus the Lecture” (published in the July/August 2003 edition of Educause Review) suggests a paradigmatic shift in the possibilities of education—from everything involving the facilities used for education to the mediums used in educating students en masse. Idealistically, I am more than in favor of what Foreman suggests, but I also see the conflict in shifting education in such a revolutionary way. When he says that the proposed, videogame-based Psychology 101 course would “eliminate the need for placed-based psychology professors,” I can imagine the earthquake of complaints a change like this would make. To go with the analogy of a revolutionary change, Foreman’s game-based education proposal might cause a stir reminiscent of Dickens’s introduction to A Tale of Two Cities. It may be the worst of times for educators grown stagnant with their current pedagogical processes, but the educational benefits for students may be extraordinary and virtually immeasurable. In addition, some of these same professors and teachers who complain about the lack of academic competency produced by students might just see increased competence—of course the irony of this is that the academic competency existed in the first place, but not in a paper-pencil type medium.
One of the most important parts of Foreman’s ideas involves the assessment aspect of game-based teaching. Developing innovative assessments that measure students’ growth and offer students' immediate responses is likely the most challenging aspect for teachers. A major selling point of game-based learning is that assessments are built into the programs and “the student-player is unable to move to a higher level until competence at the current level is established and confirmed.” If game-based learning developers could show current educators some real, empirical data confirming that the learning process is taking place, I think game-based learning will be a nearer part of our future.
Although I’m a proponent of game-based education on almost every level, I have a difficult time understanding the benefits of game-based learning in some areas of literacy and Language Arts. On page 14, Foreman states that “these visualizations, best referred to as immersive worlds, can bring a student into and through any environment that can be imagined. Instead of learning about a subject by listening to a lecture or by processing page-based alphanumerics (i.e., reading), students can enter and explore a screen-based simulated world that is the next best thing to reality.” This statement is trumped up with rhetorical pathos by using words like “explore” and “enter” that coincide with phrases like “immersive worlds” and “screen-based simulated world” to make game-based learning sound, quite literally, out of this world. In this way, Foreman does an excellent job of helping readers ignore the adverb “instead” which is followed by a verbose synonymic phrase for reading he calls “processing page-based alphanumerics.” What concerns me is that students will always need to learn reading and writing competently even if they are involved in learning through immersive worlds. For example, when students learn about aspects of financial literacy, it seems unlikely that credit card companies will send students through an interactive world of zero percent APRs and retroactive interest. They send them either a brochure through snail mail or through an electronic message containing alphanumerics which must be processed in order to understand the implications of using credit. In other words, the game-based education will be beneficial in a number of ways, but educators and developers of educational materials must always remember that being academically disciplined is still an extraordinary part of learning. Life is filled with excruciatingly boring minutiae (i.e., insurance policies, loan agreements, financial-aid applications, investment reports, et cetera) that are essential to successful living. These things take time and discipline to learn and adequately fulfill. Educators cannot forget about this aspect of education. Remember, getting those “subject matter experts” to help develop the immersive world of the historically accurate, game-based Elizabethan London “populated by historical luminaries (e.g., Shakespeare)” will take an extraordinary amount of processing page-based alphanumerics from old and faded primary texts with some of the most difficult of antiquated language.
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