Not too long ago I was at school, and came around the corner to find several students crowded around one kid’s cell phone screen.  They were laughing…so naturally…I assumed the worst—that they were sharing something salacious and titillating.  I yelled, “Freeze!  No one move a muscle!” I confiscated the phone with the students looking at me in confusion.    I soon discovered why.

I looked at the screen expecting something profane or pornographic.  But what I found surprised me…and got me thinking.  It turned out that these students were actually looking at a free app that one of them had downloaded called K-D Calc.  It’s designed to provide feedback on how well you play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo, or any other multiplayer series game.  It provides stats that help you track your progress and see where you can improve with a simple ratio calculator that allows you to quickly see your win-loss ratio, detailed historical statistics, and links to a number of YouTube channel resources to help improve your game.

This is the world that students and their teachers live in—a world permeated by feedback.  We always seem to know exactly how we are doing.  The treadmill at the gym, for example, tells us our current pace, how many calories we have burned, and how much further we have to run to meet our workout goal. We get regular updates on our data and Internet usage throughout the month.  The GPS on our phone or built in to our car tells us where we are, where we are headed, and delivers timely step-by-step instructions.  Should we happen to take a wrong turn, a GPS immediately makes a quick adjustment, and delivers modified directions to get us back on track.

But in schools, there is much room for improvement in the ways in which we seek to provide students with meaningful feedback.  In the early grades, teacher feedback seems to serve as verification that someone cares enough about our work to read and think about it.  But feedback should be much more than that.  It should match specific descriptions and suggestions.  It should be just-in-time and just-for-me information delivered to students when and where it will do the most good (Brookhart, 2008).

Dr. Judy Willis is a neurologist turned classroom teacher.  She now works with Edutopia and lectures around the country to promote the incorporation of neuroscience in classroom learning.  She has spoken often about the feedback and scaffolding that are needed to support students' in difficult learning tasks, and posits that we might look towards video games as models for our classrooms.  After all, gamers are making errors 80% of the time.  But, games give hints, cues, and other feedback so players' brains have enough expectation of reward to persevere.  Why couldn’t a classroom feedback model follow suit.  Games provide timely, corrective, and progress-acknowledging feedback that allows the students to correct mistakes, build understanding progressively, and recognize their incremental progress.

Dr. Willis insists that good games give players opportunities for experiencing intrinsic reward at frequent intervals when they apply the effort and practice the specific skills they need to get to the next level. Games do not require mastery of all tasks and the completion of the whole game.  Instead, the player gains points or tokens for small incremental progress and ultimately the powerful feedback of the success of progressing to the next level (Willis, 2011).

John Hattie publishes very large books that put together several people’s research from around the world. A substantial amount of what he has aggregated focuses on improving the use of feedback in schools.  Hattie (2009) states that educators need to keep three questions in mind when it comes to their students:  “Where are they going?” “How are they going?” and “Where to next?” (p. 37).

In other words, the feedback we provide to students needs to go beyond the normal grades, punitive action, and occasional rewards that we usually offer in the classroom.  Instead, educators should take a lesson or two from steady, flowing feedback embedded in the apps and games that our students use so habitually.

As a kid, I remember one of my teachers in high school, Mr. Jefferies, who always went to great lengths to grade our essays the same night that we handed them in.  He said that he wanted to be able to discuss our performance with us…before the relevance of the assignment ‘leaked out of our brains.  Other researchers agree with him on the sense of urgency with which educators should seek to communicate with their students.  They insist that in or for feedback to be effective, it must first be timely.  By timely, we mean that learning is enhanced based on when feedback is given and how often it is used.  According to Gee (2007), human beings learn best when feedback and information are given ‘just in time’ (when they put it to use) and ‘on demand’ (when they feel they need it).  Like other researchers, Gee acknowledges that the powerful in feedback built into video games.  In a game, a person makes predictions, choices, and takes action while simultaneously receiving a steady flow of feedback that proves helpful for future decision-making.   Like games, teachers can explore ways to provide students feedback when they need it, and…to give them feedback designed to increase their chance of success.

As educators strive to improve their feedback practices, they can better address those three crucial questions for their practice and students… “Where are they going?” “How are they going?” and “Where to next?” (p. 37).   The real key, however, is not seeing feedback as something that we provide to students…but rather as a dynamic and timely way of improving their learning.

References

Brookhart, S. M. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Dean, C. B., & Marzano, R. J. (2012). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, Va: ASCD.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge.

Willis, j. (2011, April 14).  A Neruologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool.  Edutopia.   http://www.edutopia.org/blog/video-games-learning-student-engagement-judy-willis

Human beings are wired for two things—learning and playing.  No one is likely argue with the first claim…that we are wired for learning.  Babies who are only a couple months old, for example, naturally begin to babble and imitate sounds.  After a few more months, they learn to support their entire weight on their legs.  By the time they are two-years-old, they can walk up and down stairs while just a bit of support and even start formulating two-to-four word sentences.  This natural acquisition of new skills and abilities transpires for nearly every human being and is evidence that we are wired…for learning.

But are we also wired for playing? Recently I had the opportunity to visit with Dr. Barbara Voorhies, an archeologist who studies ancient civilizations on the coast of Chipas, Mexico. She has a PhD from Yale, and is currently a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California in Santa Barbara.  Back in late 80’s, one of her projects at an ancient fishing village involved the excavation of enormous mounds of shells that had gone largely undisturbed for thousands of years.  The real, discovery, however, wasn’t in the shell mound…but underneath it: an odd, round shape pressed into the mud by an ancient fisherman.

Though her discovery was decades ago, it wasn’t until just recently that she was able to put all the pieces together.  Based on other people’s research and a number of similar discoveries around the world, Dr. Voorhies figured out that below this massive pile of shells was an ancient  ‘chase’ game played with primitive dice—much like Candyland or Chutes and Ladders. It’s one of many games played by ancient man that has been discovered all over the world.  Some of the games are alleged to be the predecessors of ‘mobile gaming’: a mat with the game painted on it so that could be rolled up, transported, and played anywhere.

Humans have played games for thousands of years.  And why wouldn’t we?  Games offer rapt and rapid learning—a chance to learn deeply and quickly. My family recently had a few days off of school due to snow, so in addition to sledding and snowball fights, we dusted off the old Monopoly board.  As my kids played I made little notes from time to time about the formal and informal learning that that seemed to be taking place.  Any one who has played a bit of Monopoly tends to develop a strategy that seems to combine risk assessment, diversification, and timing. There is also a great deal of mental math, negotiation, and trading that comes into play.  But as I watched three of my sons play, I noticed another skill being the developed—the ability to adapt and evolve.

Games like Monopoly have their own rules, but it is not uncommon for people play by ‘house rules,’ or their own modified version of the game.  At our house, as the game drug on, my sons made their own adjustments and modifications.  For example, it didn’t take them long to learn that being the banker was a lot of work, so they decided that everyone would take a turn running the money for ten minutes and then collect an extra 200 dollars at the end of their shift.  At one point, the youngest brother started to lose the game—and as a result—also started to lose interest.   To ensure that he kept playing, the other two brothers afforded him control over the selection of music that played in the background on Pandora.  My favorite part of watching them play, though,  was when one of the brothers successfully bartered for control of Boardwalk using a combination of his own previously acquired properties and two chocolate chip cookies that were fresh out of the oven.

These kids calculated, schemed, and compromised.  They experimented with strategies and even developed a bit of financial diction.  That is the real power of games.  Games do what teachers often struggle to do—they blur the lines between learning and playing.

 References

Voorhies, B. (2013). The Deep Prehistory of Indian Gaming: Possible Late Archaic Period Game Boards at the Tlacuachero Shellmound, Chiapas, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity, 24(1), 98-115.