Learning Through Computer Games - Why Schools Should Gamify Lessons

With video games playing a major role in the majority of young people’s lives, it’s time for schools to look at them afresh and start productively engaging with them, argues Tom Dore, head of education for the British Esports Association and Science teacher at King Edward’s School, Bath.
 
Put yourself in the shoes of a teenager in the early 1960s, amid the first stirrings of rock and roll.

Think how passionate and enthusiastic you’d be for this new and thrilling phenomenon.

Now picture how you’d have felt if the adults around you dismissed it as a complete waste of time, or worse, a corrupting influence.

Fast forward to the present day, and many of our teenagers face a similar situation with respect to their love of video games.

In Ofcom’s annual ‘Children and parents: Media use and attitude report’ published in February 2020, it was stated that 81% of 12-15 year olds play video games, on average, for nearly 12 hours per week. Just imagine what that figure climbed to during lockdown.

I maintain that it’s time for educators and other stakeholders to recognise the positives of video games, and the opportunities they can provide to motivate and engage young people. 

It might be a different activity to the pursuits we had – or indeed the 80s and 90-era games we might have played ourselves when we were young - but that doesn’t make the modern video gaming hobby ‘wrong’.

On the contrary, I believe that there are many positive reasons why we should bring video games out of the bedroom and embrace them in schools.

Character building

As a secondary science teacher with over 15 years’ experience across alternative provision, state and independent settings, I’ve spent much time finding ways of motivating and engaging students.

For many young people, an effective ‘hook’ might take the form of traditional extracurricular activities such as sport, music, art or drama.

However, a few years ago, when I was an assistant principal at one of the first sponsored academies in Reading, I realised we were failing to engage with a significant demographic of students that simply weren’t into those kinds of clubs and activities.

That’s when I turned to video gaming, and in particular, ‘esports’.

To the uninitiated, esports refers to organised, competitive, human-versus-human video gaming with an accompanying spectator element (and emphatically not the solitary ‘playing against the computer in your bedroom’ activity many might imagine).

Around 40 different games are currently recognised as esports, the majority being team-based. Through playing as part of an esports team, young people get to develop many of the same holistic character skills they might acquire through more traditional team-based activities – leadership, communication, decision making, problem solving, strategic thinking.

They also stand to develop strong friendships and a sense of community by participating, all while having great fun doing it.

Links to learning

The impact that video games can have in the classroom extends beyond character education.

Esports offers explicit links to the computer science and digital skills that will be critical to our society moving forwards. Indeed, the newly published World Economic Forum ‘Future of Jobs Report 2020’ cites technology use, design and programming among the top 10 most desirable skills in the 2025 workplace. 

There are a growing number of education pathways linked to esports that can support careers across a range of digital, creative and technology industries.

For example, the British Esports Association (the UK’s not-for-profit national body for esports) has partnered with Pearson to create BTECs in esports – the first such qualifications of their kind anywhere in the world.

Within higher education, the universities of Chichester, Staffordshire, Nottingham Trent and Birmingham City all offer undergraduate programmes based around esports. In terms of popularity with students, esports ranks second behind football measured by total number of established clubs or societies at Universities in the UK.

In the US, over 200 colleges offer esports scholarships to students, as has previously been the case for traditional sports such American football and basketball.

Competitive spirit

The global esports industry is growing exponentially, with top professional esports teams and their players earning six- and seven-figure salaries through competitive leagues and tournaments modelled on traditional sports.

For instance, the team of five that won a tournament called ‘The International’ for the game DOTA 2 in 2019 pocketed $15 million in prize money.

Some of you may also be familiar with Jaden ‘Wolfiez’ Ashman, who won over $1 million in the Fortnite World Cup last year whilst studying for his GCSEs.

He’s now signed to one of the UK’s top professional esports organisations, Excel Esports, who are based at Twickenham Stadium – the home of England Rugby. 

Closer to home, recent Old Edwardian from KES, Tobin Leigh used his race winnings as one of the world’s top five drivers on Microsoft’s motor racing game, ForzaRC, to co-fund his university tuition fees, and is currently using his knowledge of the industry to work as a Junior Team Manager at Veloce Esports.  

At a school and college level, the British Esports Association runs the British Esports Championships.

Over the course of the 2019/2020 academic year, almost 300 teams from around 75 different schools and colleges entered the Championships, playing online fixtures against each other during weekly afterschool school sessions.  Excitingly, the new academic year has seen a KES team enter the fray, as a Year 11 team competes in the Overwatch Championship and, to date, are doing extremely well. The KES team are undefeated this season having beaten a number of established, experienced teams of 6th form students along the way.

Harness the positives 

With all this mind, plus the growing importance of online technologies in the post-coronavirus ‘new normal’, isn’t it about time we harnessed the positives of video gaming and esports in our homes and in our schools? 

Moving forwards at KES, as computers are upgraded, we hope to install a number of PCs with higher specifications that will allow us to further engage our young people. It is also worth highlighting that these PCs will also enhance the teaching of subjects like Computer Science, DT, Art & Photography.

And at home?  Whilst all parents understand different genres of film and music and therefore what is / isn’t appropriate for their children. How many parents can say the same about video games and esports? To help, please find below links to further information to support you.

Like we watched TV with our parents in the evenings when we were young, you could perhaps try playing some video games with your children.  You never know, you might enjoy it. They certainly do!