In their 2007 article “Violent Video Games as Exemplary Teachers: A Conceptual Analysis”, Douglas and Ronald Gentile discuss the implications of video games on learned behavior. Much like the popular belief, they discovered that “playing more frequently during a given week over multiple years was correlated with greater hostile attribution and arguments.” While the aggressive association with video games has not changed, their learned behavior associations were recently turned upside-down by researchers Ulrika Bennerstedt, Jonas Ivarsson and Jonas Linderoth.
In their study of video-game behavior, the researchers found that video games assist in the development of collaborative skills. Much like the school playground, gamers that are overly aggressive or inconsiderate do not do as well; comparatively, the best gamers are strategic and technically knowledgeable. Furthermore, the success of video-games also offers several lessons within the classroom. In their original research, Douglas and Ronald Gentile compiled the following list of lessons for the classroom:
1. Teach fewer concepts, but require that students master and then overlearn them;
2.Connect those concepts (via a spiral curriculum) to past and future learnings via continual review and practice, as well as reminders of the connections;
3. Reinforce (extrinsically with grades and intrinsically with perceived self-efficacy) increasing levels of competence or automaticity, depth of understanding, and analytic or creative applications of these concepts;
4. Invent more ways for students to experiment with identities relevant to their studies; and
5. Use technology where appropriate to provide practice toward automaticity in a game-like atmosphere.
In the following video, researcher James Paul Gee discusses the learned behavior and positive outcomes of video games. His discussion on the theory of learning through video games offers a great compliment to the recent research arguing the positive outcomes.
