Media Studies: Video Games and Education

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For a long time, many people saw video games as a frivolous activity that was a waste of time and that distracted young people from "more important things". Some people viewed video games so negatively that they even claimed that video games were rotting children's minds. I wonder how these people would react if they heard that there are several schools that allow students to play video games in the classroom. 

Tobias Staaby is a Norwegian high school teacher who uses games such as Skyrim, The Last of Us, and The Walking Dead to teach lessons about topics as varied as ethics and narrative structure. He demonstrates that video games can be just as good as, if not better, at teaching students to think critically about the world around them as novels. Unlike a novel, which typically presents a single perspective, video games have the ability to show multiple perspectives. Role playing games (RPGs) allow players to create their own characters and force them to make decisions during the game. These games have a high level of replay-ability that encourages players to make different characters who then make different decisions throughout the game. Video games can teach students about issues that they had never realized existed, as Staaby explains when he says that in The Walking Dead "[t]he choices that you make affect the outcome of the story, and since the game presents the students with ethical dilemmas they have never encountered before, it makes for much more meaningful and engaging discussions". The video below explains how video games are able to increase students' civic engagement by teaching them about an issue while also demonstrating what they can do to address the issue.



The vehicle of video games is not only beneficial for teaching about topics like ethics and politics, but is also a fantastic way to explore various types of media and teach media literacy. Teachers can show a portion of a game and ask students to identity the different forms of media that are present in the game. One game can contain written words, graphics, sounds, and spoken words all within the same scene. Students can also compare video games to movies and novels. They can do exercises such as making a chart of the similarities and differences between these various vehicles, noting which forms of media can be present in each vehicle. Terrell Heick explains that games can be useful for teaching concepts such as tone, using the example of comparing Limbo and Little Big Planet 2. Besides comparing the tone from two works that use the same type of media, teachers can further ask students to compare the tone from two works that use different types of media, like a novel and a video game. Similar to novels, many video games contain both story arcs and character development. Since video games contain both visual and auditory components, they can appeal to a wider range of learning preferences, making it easier for some students to identify the story arcs and understand how the characters change throughout the story. 

Here are some ideas of how to use video games to teach media literacy correlating to the Grade 8 specific expectations in the Ontario Curriculum for Language: 

• "1.4 explain why different audiences (e.g., with respect to gender, age, culture, race, income level) might have different responses to a variety of media texts" (147). Teacher prompt: "Why might this game appeal to certain ages and not others? Why might this game be inappropriate for people under a certain age?" 
• "1.5 demonstrate understanding that different media texts reflect different points of view and that some texts reflect multiple points of view" (148). Teacher prompt: "What are the various organizations that you encounter in the game, and how are they different from each other? Why do these two characters have different opinions on the main character's decision?" 
• "2.1 explain how individual elements of various media forms combine to create, reinforce, and/or enhance meaning" (148). Teacher prompt: "How do the visual details in the game affect the tone of the game? How does the soundtrack enhance the game? How would this game feel different if it had a different soundtrack? How would the game be different if it had characters from other media replace the main character?" 

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