Education and Games: Friends or Foes?
Written by: Maddison Kurniawan

“Education should learn from the positive side of gaming—reward, accomplishment, and fun,” Sebastian Thrun once said.

 

However, Herb Kohl also said,  “We cannot and will not ban the creation of violent video games. But we can prevent the distribution of these disturbing games to children, where their effects can be negative.”

 

These two statements contradict each other, sparking an ongoing debate to this day. With 3.2 billion people worldwide regularly utilizing their time playing video games online, people seem to lack knowledge about how its impact spans various aspects of life, most notably education.

 

To start, it has been proven that games are part of healthy development and childhood while growing up. Along this path, they are known to improve critical thinking and class cooperation, especially in games that involve tactic-making and also strategies. According to a survey by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 55% of students play games every week, and 78% of students admitted to playing games in the classroom. Moreover, statistics show that 74% of teachers are involved in games as a teaching method, and a few are the most common game apps. 

 

Teachers often struggle with ways to keep their classroom engaged in learning, and with the help of these digital educational games, enhance students' learning satisfaction and overall enjoyment of the academic experience. With advanced technology, games can make it easier to learn educational materials and develop better analytical skills.  However, as much as it satisfies them, is it a truly effective method of teaching?

 

It happens very often that games end up diverting students' attention away from the main educational content. Uninterested students may decide to open other tabs instead of participating in the class, which destroys the main purpose of using games to learn. As much as Kahoot or Quizziz may represent multiple-choice questions or even structured questions, most of their answers are often fixed and not flexible. There may be errors that lead to wrong answers as well.

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Capturing students' attention can be challenging, especially given their often short attention spans. While technology isn't yet advanced enough to detect if educational games are the sole focus over other websites, it raises the question of how games might evolve to become truly impactful in the field of education.