Games & Learning LinkDump: Language, Business & Motivation
For my various jobs and roles, I write a lot of research reports. A lot of the time, there are really fascinating statistics and ideas that I come across when I'm compiling research which might not be directly relevant to the report, but which are still worth talking about. Periodically, I want to compile these into little link dumps which I can share. This is the first of...some.
I have particular interest in games as a learning resource. When I'm presenting to the public as a representative of GameHub, I often tell stories about how playing games helped me to understand and retain topics at school. At primary level, my parents brought me up on Dorling Kindersley titles. At secondary school, I bolstered my Ancient and Modern History with Zeus: Master of Olympus and the original Call of Duty. And at University, a lifetime of RPGs was a lifeline when drowning in the moral quandries of Wittgenstein and his obtusely written opinions on ethical conduct.
I'm always interested therefore in games that teach, whether they teach us about a topic, or about ourselves. For GameHub, I always recommend parents encourage their children to use games as immersive language aids, and this article offers more case studies of why this is a good approach: http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/the-role-of-games-for-language-learners/
As someone who is interested in entrepreneurship, I've always been a bit sceptical of classroom learning about business concepts. I just don't think that sometimes as complex and intuitive as enterprise can be taught effectively from a textbook. But, you need a mentor, and those are hard to find, and you need a project, and its disappointing and disheartening when those fail. These articles talk about using games to allow students to make risk-free interactions with case study businesses, and learn by experimentation and simulation what works and what doesn't:
http://www.theesa.com/article/can-you-get-your-mba-using-a-video-game/ & https://badgerherald.com/news/2017/02/14/uw-collaborates-with-video-game-developers-to-create-educational-video-games-headlines-added/
And finally, I found and liked this: http://quanticfoundry.com/2015/09/04/game-audience-profiles/ It's a tool for statistical analysis of gaming cohorts and demographics, but its also a really super interesting way for individuals to discover their own interest traits relating to play. I've got a lot of thoughts about the particular way that the player archetypes correspond to traits like gender and personality type, and this is a great tool to help me meditate on those further and on how to articulate them well. All the Quantic Foundary stuff I came across these past few days has been really impressively written and interesting; a personal favourite was this one: http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/02/09/theme-and-weapon/ If you want to get a motivation profile of your own, they have them for both digital and board games, so sign up here: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/lab/
