Videogames and Learning

The article by Vivek Anand and Chapter 8 of Ian Bogost’s, Persuasive Games, discuss the relationship between video game playing and learning. A clear distinction between the two articles was that one explained the different psychological learning theories and how they relate to video game play while the other showed the results of an experiment attempting to display a correlation between video game play and academic performance.
I found the article by Vivek Anand much more interesting since it was more straight-forward and experimental. The results of the experiment were not surprising to me since I have personally watched the effects of video game play on people’s academic performance. For example, my roommate during my freshman year at RPI had a full academic scholarship because of his high school grades. At the beginning of the semester, he was always on top of his work and was receiving A’s in all of his classes. When he was introduced to World of Warcraft, I noticed that his sleeping, eating, and hygiene patterns were becoming irregular. As time went on, he attended less and less classes while missing several exams simply due to his W.O.W. playing time. He unfortunately realized the significant repercussions of his video game play when it was too late and was forced by his parents to transfer to a school closer to home. The significance of this situation did not only display the results of the correlation between video game play academic performance, but also the video game addiction phenomena described in the beginning of the article.
Even though I do agree that video games can have a detrimental effect students’ academic performance, I believe that the bigger problem rests within the individual. Anybody going to college should be there to become a professional and should learn how to resist distractions such as video games at least to the point where their GPA is significantly affected. If time is being overcommitted to video games, then the problem could be related to a lack of interest in the person’s field of study or a lack of self control, rather than the video games alone. A lack of self control could also have the potential of surfacing in the future and may end up leading to more serious addictive activities such as gambling. Therefore, video games are not a significant source of negative learning. Instead, they have great potential as learning tools for future generations as long as they are utilized properly.
Chapter 8 of Persuasive Games takes an in-depth look at the behaviorist and constructivist perspectives of video game learning. Of the two, I would agree more with the constructivist perspective. One idea that I found exceptionally interesting was how Beck and Wade see video games as “only a cultural trend, a population of minds properly conditioned for corporate influence.” Even though this is a very general statement and lacks supporting facts, I agree with it much more than the behaviorist point-of-view. I find that the behaviorist view takes the analyzation a little too far and treats video games as if it is a threat to human behavior more than other entertainment forms. For example, the text mentions that “the risk that a videogame could teach the right things to the wrong people is a grave concern.” However, sources such as the internet pose a much bigger threat and are much more useful for any criminology such as terrorist attacks. It’s for these reasons that I find the constructivist perspective a much more rational and constructive view than the over-analytical view of behaviorists.