September 2006 — Features
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Educational Gaming :: All the Right MUVEs
One popular feature is a dance design studio, where the children begin by tracing the steps of some actual dances. The basis for the activity is learning about vector arithmetic, so that once students learns how the vectors work, they can design their own dances. “We got a nice letter from a girl who designed her own dance but didn’t realize that this was vector arithmetic until she encountered it in school,” says Numedeon President Jen Sun. “She perked up and told her math teacher, ‘Oh, I know what this is! This is Mimi’s Dance Studio!’”
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The Teacher as Guide
Using a MUVE in class transforms the teacher’s customary role of providing answers into one of providing questions. As Sun says, “When you use a MUVE in a classroom, the teacher’s role is much more of a guide, a part of the inquiry process rather than an answergiver.” Sun says teachers have to adjust to “thinking in a different way” to encourage their students to ask questions by starting off the lesson with questions of their own “rather than beginning with definitions.”
Galas agrees. “To use MUVEs effectively,” she says, “teachers need to be skilled in facilitating discussion—creating and sustaining student-centered classroom inquiry—to assist students in learning to ask good questions and to collaborate in teams. This kind of teaching truly demands more of teachers. They need to be supported, not only in learning how to teach this way and understanding the value of this pedagogical approach, but also in having time to gather resources so that when the students are ready, the teacher is ready too.”
Decentralizing the role of the teacher alters the students’ role in their own education as well. Galas says one benefit of using MUVEs is that students “learn how to learn. In traditional classrooms, where the teacher is supposed to be the fountain of knowledge, kids either get it or they don’t. And if they don’t, they think they’re stupid and turn off. In a MUVE, they can ask questions without penalties, and this actually affects the classroom environment for the better.”
Elizabeth Perry, technology integrations specialist at The Ellis School in Pittsburgh, where a MUVE that has students investigate an ancient shipwreck is being used to augment the science curriculum, says that “MUVEs can help students think critically and analyze and construct new knowledge for themselves. These experiences may present the challenge of a less teacher-centered classroom, but as the students become more responsible for their own learning, and as they draw on the collaborative strength of group work at its best, we find unexpected leaders emerging from the process.”
