Traveling to Microworlds Part 3 “Epistemic games”

Epistemic games

David Williamson Shaffer, Associate Professor of Learning Science at the University of Madison in Wisconsin, is a scholar who has embraced the ability of computers to offer different frames of mind. In his book How Computer Games Help Children Learn he offers ways to marry the entertainment value of video games to teaching methods. According to him, the content of games and computer software is not the most important thing about the digital revolution that has been going on in the rooms of children and students worldwide. He takes a McLuhanite stance when he says that “what matters about computers […] isn’t whether we use them to trade penny stocks for low commissions, shop on eBay, pay bills with online banking, check the weather, or play Doom with friends. […] What computers do, in all of these examples, and in every other way we use them, is let us work with simulations of the world around us. […] By letting us work and play with powerful simulations, computers change what it means to know something and what it means to do something.”[1] The possibilities in the field of education are explained as follows: “Computers and video games can change education because computers now make it possible to learn on a massive scale by doing the things that people do in the world outside of school. They make it possible for students to learn to think in innovative and creative ways just as innovators in the real world learn to think creatively.”[2]

The greatest asset of computer simulations, according to Shaffer, is that it makes it safe to experiment, to explore and try out different things you would not be able to do so easily in real life. However, he thinks that wandering around in a simulated world without guidance or objectives is a bad way to learn. The knowledge students need to learn, he argues, is the knowledge experts have. “Any simulation for learning needs to be set in context if you want someone using it to develop a professional vision of what is being simulated.”[3] To shape the simulation like a game, to give it meaning and objectives, is what makes them valuable.
Video games have a unique quality Shaffer calls epistemology. “An epistemic game is a game that deliberately creates the epistemic frame of a socially valued community by re-creating the process by which individuals develop the skills, knowledge, identities, values and epistemology of that community.”[4] In his book he gives many examples, like the sandbox-type game Digital Zoo.The aim here is for students to construct animal characters using the program SodaConstructor, which puts them in the seat of engineers and design professionals. Through the game and its objectives, players learn how to think like an engineer in an involving way. “In these games, the understanding that comes from acting in a microworld-the world of the simulation at the core of the game-is understanding that sticks, because it is developed in the context of analysing and solving problems in the same way as a group of innovative and creative thinkers do.”[5]

It is clear that Shaffer wants to use the epistemological qualities of games for something useful: to make students get acquainted with professional frames of mind and offer an engaging educational environment. The nature of his argument compels him to look at epistemic frames purely from a teacher’s perspective: how can we use this quality to our own goal, which is to bring our system of education up to speed with twenty-first century reality.

A very interesting and potentially fruitful pursuit. But to me, there is much more to the frames of mind games have to offer than explicit educational value alone.

• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Broadening your horizons
• Part 3 Epistemic games
• Part 4 Semiotic domains and their similarity to travel
• Part 5 Homo Ludens
• Part 6 Case in point: waging war as frame of mind
• Part 7 Conclusion & References.

[1] . David Williamson Schaffer, How Computer Games help Children Learn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) pp.8-9.

[2] . Ibid., pp. 9.

[3] . Ibid., pp. 68.

[4] . Ibid., pp. 164.

[5] . Ibid., 70.