Using interactive technology to enhance learning
By Brad Gauder
 More
than 40 years after the first known computer game, Spacewar, was written by
a graduate student as a way to learn how to use MIT’s new PDP-11 computer,
Dr. Kurt Squire and Dr. Constance Steinkuehler are integrating computer games
into the undergraduate education and psychology courses they teach at the University
of Wisconsin—Madison. Dr. Squire’s research emphasizes the interactive technology that enhances learning. Dr. Steinkuehler’s
studies in socially distributed cognition feed her interest in the cultural
and social aspects of gaming.
How is the success of gaming as an instructional method measured?
Steinkuehler: ‘Assessment’ has become a very hot topic in games
research over the past year, yet much of the discussion has centered on traditional,
‘no child left behind’ sorts of standardized testing, which are hotly
debated. I think that what games do best—enrich experience, cultivate expertise
and identity, foster complex systems thinking—are the very things we have
a devil of a time measuring. Yet, we are beginning to see that games can do
those things. Unfortunately, assessing this sort of learning is difficult and
the methods as hotly contested.
Which fields of study is gaming better suited for as an instructional method?
Squire: None in particular. The limitations of our current technology and
designs to model human behavior make many social skill
areas problematic, but creative design can get around some of that. In part,
it’s due to the wide range of instructional methods that can be incorporated
into gamebased learning environments and the diversity in games.
How does your personal interest in gaming influence the courses you develop
and teach?
Steinkuehler: I teach undergraduate educational psychology lecture courses,
where my own gameplay and research on others’ gameplay becomes fodder for
grounding discussions of the potential of digital media and the affinity groups
that form through them. As a researcher, my game experience is the very foundation
on which the rest of my work rests.
As gaming continues to develop, what future does it have in the academic
community?
Squire: It will be pretty big. Game studies as a field like film studies
seems to have some momentum and is already quite big in Europe, which is beginning
to graduate PhDs in the area. I think that games courses will make good liberal
arts courses, in that they connect so many areas—from computer design to
fashion. Making games involves creating whole worlds, so literally there is
room for every major field to participate.
For more on Dr. Squire and Dr. Steinkuehler, see: website.education.wisc.edu/ksquire/
and www.sit.wisc.edu/~steinkuehler/
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