Potential Benefits: Educational Benefits

It may seem strange to think that playing a video game would have educational benefits. MMOG virtual worlds create complex cultures, races, and stories. Some MMOGs take place in historical settings. Others are futuristic or imaginary.

A graduate student at Stanford who has studied MMOGs for many years, writes about learning leadership skills, teamwork, and relationship/communication skills.

Here are links to three of his weekly articles on MMOGs and learning:

Learning Leadership Skills:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000338.php

Learning Relationship / Communication Skills:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000339.php

Helping Teenagers Deal with Identity / Gender Issues:
http://www.nickyee.com/mosaic/adolescence.html

James Paul Gee, the author of "What Video Games Have to Tell Us about Literacy & Learning," suggests, “There is no such thing as learning ‘in general.’” We always learn something.” (Gee, 2003). In MMOGs, players learn techniques for effective communication while in the game, and also learn about how a fictitious culture can have an effect on gameplay. They have to remember or keep track of information about the virtual world in order to complete quests, and this involves techniques for memorization that could be applied to the real world.

MMOGs can even be used at the college level for educational purposes. Aaron Delwiche taught a course at University of Washington called “Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role-playing Games.” According to Delwiche, “Ethnography is a qualitative research method in which the investigator attempts to develop an insider’s perspective of a particular culture.” The course was taught using an MMOG called Everquest as a context for practicing ethnographic research.

MMORPG's in the College Classroom
AaronDelwiche (adelwich@trinity.edu)
Trinity University
Department of Communication
http://www.nyls.edu/docs/delwiche.pdf

MMOGs are immersive experiences. Each player constructs their own unique play experience from moment to moment.