by Robert Stephan and Paul Milliman
How do you get students to want to learn? Our session tackles this question through two case studies focused on video game pedagogy in history-themed courses. The first case study takes place in a freshman-level general education course on ancient Greece and Rome. In this course, students were given the opportunity to choose their own adventure, opting for either a traditional reading and writing assignment sequence or a videogame-based sequence. In the latter, they completed a series of six assignments while playing the ancient Greece-themed action-adventure game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. The second case study takes place in a mid-level history course focused on the medieval world. In this course, students utilize the real-time strategy game Age of Empires IV as a tool for investigating the premodern world. Preliminary results from these studies suggest that video game-based assignments hold significant potential, at least from the students’ perspective. Their “enjoyment” of the video game assignment sequence substantially outpaced that of the traditional assignment sequence. Students also thought this new technology was more conducive to learning compared to the traditional sequence. Future studies will assess whether this perception equates with reality by determining the ability of students within each sequence to meet the learning outcomes for the course.
Dr. Robert Stephan is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona. He specializes in teaching large general education courses, and his research centers on understanding the linkages between online course production value, student satisfaction, and the achievement of learning outcomes. Recently, Dr. Stephan has entered the exciting world of video games and virtual reality as an avenue for effective online pedagogy.
Dr. Paul Milliman is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on how games–especially chess, hunting, and the tournament–reflected, influenced, and supplied metaphors for processes of political, cultural, and social interaction in medieval Europe. Recently he has inverted this interest, exploring not only games in medieval Europe, but how we might use games about medieval Europe to teach college students.