Viewpoint: Online Courses as Video Games

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Viewpoint: Online Courses as Video Games

6/14/2005

By Dr. Rodney P. Riegle, Professor
Illinois State University

Online course offerings are becoming increasingly more common in education. Nearly three million U.S. students are currently taking university level courses online and more than half of all higher education institutions see online education as critical to their long-term strategy. The competition for online students will continue to escalate as more and more institutions realize that online education is a fast-growing, multi-billion dollar market.

Clearly, education is becoming a commodity and many educational institutions are looking to online education to improve their revenue stream. The competition for online students is bound to become more and more intense. The marketing of online courses, however, is still in its infancy. Courses designed like video games are one way to win this competition by appealing to the target demographic in a way that they embrace. A recent study found that 70 percent of U.S. college students play video games (32 percent even admit to playing video games during class without the knowledge of their instructors).

In addition to being one of the most popular video game genres (along with adventure and sports), RPGs are perhaps the most appropriate video game genre for educational purposes. RPG stands for Role-Playing Game. A role-playing game is a game in which each player takes the part of a character and participates in an adventure. The popularity of online role-playing games is staggering--there are currently more than 25 million people playing MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) such as The Sims Online, Runescape, City of Her'es, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy, EverQuest, Lineage, and Ragnarok.

Educational games are nothing new. A quick search of the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database yielded over 15,000 results for the keyword games. Playing video games is also not new; it has now been more than 20 years since ATARI claimed its first addicts. The advantages of online educational video games include:
· multi-media sensory stimulation
· person-person (multi-player) and/or person-machine (single player) interaction
· asynchronous (players can play at any time and place) and/or real-time interaction
· 24-7 availability
· nearly infinite resources (the entire Internet)
· individualization (players can interact with learning materials at their own pace and in their own style)
· replayability (players can make mistakes and replay poorly understood situations as often as desired)
· instant and automated record-keeping, feedback, and diagnosis
· format familiarity (today's students are inveterate game players)

Because video games are still in their infancy both technically and conceptually, most are not educational. Do not be misled by this. Video games constitute a new and as yet poorly developed instructional form that holds great promise for both designers and players. The idea of using video games to teach is admittedly controversial.