Metacognating Mario: Learning and Video Games

This is an online course offered in the summer and open to current high school students.

Although we often associate education with school-based activity, human beings learn in multiple environments beyond the formal classroom. Video games, while often dismissed as frivolous entertainment, provide one such example of a significant experiential learning context: individual players develop skills in the pursuit of goals, collaborate with each other to advance their theorizing about the game's mechanics, and display deep engagement and persistence in the face of frustration despite a lack of extrinsic rewards. Among the questions encountered in this course will be: What kind of understanding is built through game play? How might games teach us about ourselves as learners? In what ways might the skills involved in learning to play a game transfer to learning in other contexts? What pedagogical lessons might teachers take from game designers? Throughout the course, readings and activities will promote rigorous, critical analysis of both games and theories of learning.

Prerequisite: none