THE Journal recently pointed me at a website with free educational games called Brain Games. “Great,” I thought, opening the site. “Perhaps I can use some of these in my undergraduate psychology courses.” But then came the familiar disappointment I feel whenever I look at “educational games”: the same rehashed ideas converted into an online format, many of which were invented at least a century ago. Word Search, Slide Puzzles, Tic Tac Toe. My mind boggles at the creativity displayed!
Of course, if you want online versions of things we’ve had for a hundred years, this is a fantastic site. And there are certainly a few more creative and uncommon variants of the classics, and even a couple of challenging gems. But where are the truly challenging and unique ones, like Light Bot?
And more central to our purposes here, where are the online games that actually teach you useful knowledge or a skill? From my perspective, the games on these web sites aren’t educational at all; they are mostly cognitive practice, or in the parlance of the games that began the trend, brain training.
Games motivate players to learn their rule systems and practice learned skills within the world they create, all in the context of fun. What a perfect environment for training and adult education! So why hasn’t it been done? Where are the psychology games? Where are the sales games? What barriers are preventing gaming from taking the education world by storm?
A recent study coming out of UC-San Diego reveals that Americans consume on average 34 gigabytes (GB) of information per day. That’s the same type of GB that your hard drive’s size is measured in, but that 34 GB comes from a variety of sources, and doesn’t necessarily mean the raw amount of data streaming over your Internet connection.
You see, on average, Americans are exposed to 34 GB of information per day. The biggest chunk of that comes from TV, and assuming 4.5 hours per day, that accounts for roughly 45%, (~15 GB) of our daily consumption. Computers (excluding games) account for about 9 GB.
Why is this related to training? Well, let me redefine “consumption of information” for you: learning! Whenever a person reads a news article online, watches a TV show, even plays a video game, they are learning something. We usually call this “informal learning,” which captures the idea that no one specifically set out to teach using most of these modes of information transfer – instead, the learners themselves sought out this information on purpose and decided it was important enough to pay attention.
That’s important. Public opinion on training is that employees are unmotivated to learn just about anything, and forcing them into dull training seminars where they have no choice but to pay attention is often the only way to get our messages across – just watch a few episodes of The Office, and you’ll see what I mean. But this study reveals that Americans (at least) actively seek information in their environment, which stands opposite of public opinion.
So then the big question: how can we take advantage of all of this self-directed learning to improve work and training? Imagine a workplace where online news feeds, videos, and training materials were easily accessible to employees on topics that would improve their job performance, and where they would be motivated to seek out that information and learn it because they wanted to. And why don’t we have this now? What are the barriers to making this reality? And do you think it would really work?
A University of Minnesota graduate student in sociology was recently jailed for protecting the identity of his research subjects – radical environmentalists and animal rights activists. The graduate student was jailed specifically for failing to reveal to authorities his knowledge of a particularly destructive ALF attack at the University of Iowa.
To the sociologists, the issue is straightforward. Confidentiality was promised, and confidentiality should be delivered. Even if the researcher has specific information about the identities of activists that have committed or will commit crimes, promises were made. After all, they probably wouldn’t have revealed such information to the researcher without that promise. But the law takes a different approach.
Legal protections exist in only a handful of scenarios related to the social sciences. Research surrounding certain high-risk populations, such as drug addicts and jailed convicted felons, has some legal protections. But animal rights activists don’t fall in that category.
Federal prosecutors have charged him with conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism under a new law that gives the fed more power to prosecute those that vandalize animal research facilities. Some believe that the charge is only to pressure him into revealing what he knows to authorities, since it is clear from the evidence surrounding the case that he had no direct role in the attacks.
If you support this graduate student’s plight, I suggest you sign the petition currently with over 1000 signatures to drop the charges against him.