Educational Games/resources for college students

[krrris]

I'm co-facilitating a doctoral class about education and video games and I could use some help. I'm looking for games (commercial or serious) that have educational value, tools that college students could use to create their own games, and articles/studies/videos that discuss the value (or critique) of video games in college classes. Any recommendations? In addition, have any of you played a game in a college class? If so, what was your experience?

[krrris]

In addition - what are some ways videogames can be helpful in the classroom? Or are there some problems with using games?

[CochondeNeige]

I'm working with a PhD student on a study that aims to cultivate technical problem-solving, small group collaboration, and sustained, self-dependent inquiry around the modification and production of games, among a group of (undergrad) students with minimal programming and game design experience. So far we've found that Twine & Inform 7 (both used to make text-based games) and Stencyl & GameMaker (available through Steam) are relatively accessible for first-time game creators. With regards to these last two toolsets, we're hypothesizing that the ability to download and mess around with the code for games that other people have created will be a huge educational affordance.

[Zinnoy]

I would say that Civilization V has a bit educational value. It has an in-game encyclopedia with tons of information about civilizations, science and world leaders.

[iza]

What i expect for law college..: Civilization V, Europa Universalis (also possible), Total War (every part?)
What i know people are mostly doing: Call of Duty, Battlefield, Fifa. *shrug* :D

[76561198113380281]

I remember that the first Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games were based on the World War II with brief and accurate descriptions of the actual battles. In between scenes they added the historically accepted stories of the battles and the player was able to read it while the next scenario was being loaded. Also, the war settings are –supposedly– highly accurate in its graphic design. I do not know if these two examples can actually count as educational games, but I can see some educational value in them. Connolly et al. make a distinction between serious and recreational games that can easily fit the examples I'm mentioning. Both of those series were created for commercial purposes, but in the road to sell those games the creators added actual serious events that can engage gamers in a multidimensional learning process. Somebody could argue that those games are biased in favor of the Allied countries, but history works in the same way.

{LINK USUNIĘTY}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_(video_game)
{LINK USUNIĘTY}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor:_Allied_Assault

[krrris]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! CochondeNeige - those tools look great. How much time does it take to teach students how to use the programs? How much class time would be devoted to technical issues? I'd like to use some sort of game-creation tool in one of my future courses.

Zinnoy & Zoey - Thanks for the recommendations; I have heard good things about Civilization V. Did you learn things while playing? Did you actually look at the encyclopedia - is it necessary for gameplay?

hrendon - Thanks for your recommendations; I do believe commercial games can have educational value (and may be more self-motivating than educational games). Would you suggest Call of Duty to be used in a history class about the War? I suppose, if films like Pearl Harbor (horrible film) is used, it's possible to use a biased game, right? As long as media literacy is taught (including teaching students how to think critically), do you think CoD can work?

[Zinnoy]

I must be honest, the actual gameplay of Civilization V does not teach you a lot. It does show you how humans developed trough the ages concerning scientific inventions and discoveries because you have to research technologies in order to progress, but this is not extremely educational.
The encyclopedia is not necessary for gameplay. I did look at it a lot but that is solely because of my interest in history. It has detailed but not extremely long descriptions on all nations and historical leaders in the game, which is a great source for gaining some basic knowledge of a country and its important historical events and influences. But again, it is not necessary for gameplay, it is just there to read if you feel like it. The gameplay itself is much more about diplomacy, development and war.

Pearl harbor is indeed a terrible movie (Showing Japanese bombing hospitals etc. which never happened) but it is useful to use as a source for gaining some basic knowledge about the event itself. CoD however, (and now i am mostly talking about part 5, World At War) is in my opinion not the best source for history. True, it does give you some information about events and what happened, but since you play solely from an allied point of view, you never learn anything about the axis and their view on the war. i think that a movie like Letters from Iwo Jima is perfect for teaching people to think critically and looking at the war from different points of view, but i have never heard of games that allow you to view the second world war from different points of view. If you do find games that show the war from different points of view however, i do believe that they could actually be useful for teaching you how to think critically about such things.

[mmmcheesywaffles]

I've played games a long time - they helped me through memory loss and other illness.

One project you may want ot learn about is the Open TTD project where the author of Transport Tycoon Deluxe gave permission to his fans to mod his game. Then even allowed them to make a whole new open source version. openttd.org is teh site and on there you will find many programmers have ported the game to other platforms and extended its featrures.

The game has educational value in that it teaches resource mangement and traffic control of vrious types of vehicles. ships and aircraft. There is buying and selling of shares too. So some business experience can be learned.