Games, Education and the Church

Add caption

Is this the future of education?

Who would have thought that World of Warcraft would ever have a place in a discussion about theological education?  Well, it does… kind of.  A better thing to say is that, according to Thomas and Brown, authors of A New Culture of Learning, argue that the type of learning that occurs in World of Warcraft and other massive multi-player online (MMO) games is indicative of how learning in general tends to occur in our world today.

More after the break...

                                                       

Part of their underlying thesis is that with the advent of digital environments, our notion of learning can no longer be thought of as a ‘mechanistic’ (p34-35) concept, rather now we value the process by which knowledge is acquired that is of more interest.  They propose a model of knowing, making, and playing, and it is the interaction of these three methods of learning that are appropriate for discussing the type of learning that is occurring today.  The basic concept is that the existing model for education, where a single individual has expertise in a certain area and imparts that knowledge to the students, is no longer tenable in a world where information is changing at such a rapid pace.  This is also, basically, the same model that Parker Palmer also rejects, interestingly enough.

Instead, they propose that a better model for describing how people learn now is as a collective.  As we become more enmeshed in an environment (indwelling, in their terms)we are able to learn from others.  They use an example from World of Warcraft where a group of players (a guild) research and learn about the next part of the game they are about to play together and how they are offered the opportunity to experiment with different approaches to figure out how to solve the problem facing them.  This is somewhat equivalent to the community of knowers that Palmer discusses, where each person is understood to bring some piece of ‘the truth’ to the group and that no single person holds all of the truth.  The old model doesn’t worker and the role of the teacher is more to be a facilitator of the process by which the group learns together and solves problem (‘riddles’ as Thomas and Brown put it).

This makes complete sense.  We have tools and capabilities so that learning can, to a great degree, be self-directed where we learn from what others have done and we contribute our own knowledge and experiences to add to the collective knowledge.  So yes, this makes complete sense for how an individual learns more and more about something in which they are interested, Thomas and brown talk about the modern concept of ‘geeking out’ to describe this phase.  However, getting an individual to that stage so that they are desiring to seek out knowledge and be part of the collective group is still a bit murky to me.

I don’t think they spend enough time on the role of the teacher/facilitator.  They help pose the riddles which drive the learning environment.  They help set the boundaries for the process of learning.  Through the questions asked and through helping the individual to frame their questions, the facilitator invites individuals into this collective group of students/knowers.  It seems almost as if Thomas and Brown assume everybody to be as much of a self-starter as the individuals in the examples at the beginning of the book.

They do offer a good reinforcement of the idea that learning does not have to take place in a traditional setting and that much of our learning comes from doing, from being giving an opportunity to test ideas and try different solutions to the problem being posed.  Theological education, likewise, needs to focus, as Hess suggested, on the ‘how’, not just the ‘what’ of Christianity.  Individuals can learn from the experiences of others and test out different permutations and combinations of ideas and actions to learn what it means to be a Christian in their context.

This focus on community and on a sense of the collective is, I think, especially appropriate to apply to a Christian educational perspective given the emphasis on community in the church.  The notion that we would all share what we know with the community in order to then grow and enrich the community is wholly consistent with the description of the early church in Acts (2:44 and 4:32).

So I do like this concept and I think it will be an effective to harness enthusiasm and go beyond what normally would be taught or covered in a course;  I think there will be a challenge to the instructor/facilitator to not assume the traditional role of 'teacher' and the step back and let the discourse and learning happen in an organic way.  If that happens, then our ability to learn and grow in a rapidly changing environment will continue to increase.