Dive Brief:
- When games help students learn basic concepts, they can be powerful tools, but if they prevent students from learning that some tasks are simply mundane, they become slightly dangerous.
- University of Michigan associate professor Kentaro Toyama, author of "Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology," argues in a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education that the students who come to expect everything to be fun will not be prepared for the responsibilities of the workplace.
- As colleges attempt to serve their student populations, they must toe the line between meeting students where they are and giving them a pass from developing intrinsic motivation to do their work.
Dive Insight:
Using games to teach concepts in a way that is more fun and interesting to students has picked up in K-12 classrooms as well as some corners of higher ed. Toyama sees it as a trend that is on the verge of spreading across all of higher education now that early adopters have had a few years to experiment.
There is value in discovering new teaching methods that get core knowledge to students. And colleges are under arguably more pressure than ever to make sure more of their students succeed and make it through graduation to an open job. But administrators must consider innovation in a larger context — at least as long as they consider their purpose preparing students for life as well as their first job.