writing.markfullmer.com

One of the most popular genres of games in era are massive multi-player online role playing games, or MMORPGs for short. In these games, a player creates a character which they then play throughout the game in a virtual world. Once created the game play is largely up to the players on how they want to spend their time in the game. While generally people try to level their characters, obtain 1337-a term meaning elite, really good- gear, and taking down the most powerful bosses, there is nothing that has to be done, no true goal to the game. Players are allowed to make the game their own and take whatever it is they want from the game. If the player wants to level, they can. If they want to fight bosses, they can. If they want to sit around all day fishing and talking to people, they can. So how can these video games that are made for entertainment help fix our educational system. What we actually have to ask is, as James Paul Gee suggests, “Can we make learning in and out of school, with or without using games, more game like?”(Gee 11)

The current education system in America requires a massive amount of both time and effort to get through. While many of these massive multi-player games are considered a time sink and waste a lot of time, gamers gladly spend the time on them. The average MMO gamer spends on average 22 hours a week on their game of choice(Yee). The more extreme gamers spending on average 45 hours per week(Riley). In California a college student needs to take at least twelve units- each unit being the equivilant to one hour of class time- to be considered a full time student. The general rule of thumb also being that each hour spent in class there should be two hours spent at home working on the class as well(Fulmer). This means that the average college student should be spending 36 hours per week just on school. The more extreme college students taking the maximum load of 19 units would then be spending an average of 57 hours per week on school. Both these numbers are well in excess of their gaming counterparts. Reducing the amount of time spent on school each week would help the students not feel so overwhelmed by the amount of work and time they need to invest each week just for school. The benefits of these games is that we put in as much work as we want into these games without the need of a required amount of work. Incorporating this concept into a classroom would enable people to put in the amount of work they feel they need to put into each class and not put in excess time in unless its necessary. Any time that is wasted sitting in a class room would be eliminated.

Even with students working on their own time with most of the responsibility focused more on the student than the teacher, the students would still have to want to do the work. Many people decide to play MMOs and continue to play them due to the strong social influence in these games.

While players are not forced to be social, and many people can get relatively far and play the game without socializing, the programmers of the game build it so that the game works best if everyone works together as a community.

People are encouraged to form parties to complete tasks, or even form entire groups that go through the game together who are there to help you whenever you need it. Through the socialization of these games many people become very close and build strong relationships.

Nick Yee spent five years interviewing MMO gamers, in an interview a 19 year old female gamer on Everquest 2 had this to say about why he enjoys grouping, “I probably play mostly to meet new people and make new friends. It's fun having friends all over the world, you can learn from the way they live and do things.. That’s what i mostly enjoy about meeting others in game.. To befriend people and get to know them, hopefully building a lasting friendship even when one of us does end up giving up on whatever game we're playing.“(Yee 4).

In many classrooms across the country students enter the class and leave 18 weeks later knowing almost nothing about the students that were in their class. Many classes are designed to where the students come in, listen to a lecture, do their classwork then leave. Classes should design a curriculum that persuades students to work together for the overall benefit.

With the earlier mention program where students will have more responsibility and the teacher guides the learning. Students would be able to work together to reach there goal. Learning together instead of on their own. In Mark Fulmer's english 100 class at Fullerton college, he has designed a class where students spend the majority of the time in class having open discussions with eachother, and often working closely with each other in little groups to complete tasks. On some occasions students in his class met up outside of class time to work together to complete assignments.

When asked if they students enjoyed the class, Mathew Golovkin, a student who was dreading taking college writing said, “I enjoy coming to class everyday, I like how I feel like we are all friends and can freely talk to each other. I would hate this class if all we did was listen to lectures all day”(Golovkin). Mathew at the time had an 83% in the class which was far better then what he was expecting in the class. If more classes could incorporate the students to socialize with each other more students would be willing to work together as a community to get tasks done just as they do in the video games.

There are endless amounts of ideas that can be taken from video games and incorporated into classrooms to help improve education. In time many classrooms might be a video game. Microsoft has already created a game system called Natal where the NPCs are able to recognize people infront of the TV and respond to both questions and emotions. This technology could be incorporated into a classroom to have completely virtual teacher aides who are able to answer any question one might has on a subject. We would be able to truly have someone on call when we need it.