1. Gaming for Change:
Learning about Global Issues through Serious
Games
Ching-Fu Lan
Teachers College, Columbia University

2. My Cotton Picking Life

3. Cotton-Picking in Uzbekistan
• “The government of Uzbekistan closes down schools across
the country and children, teachers and other workers are
forced to work on the cotton fields with little or no pay. Each
child is given a daily quota and can collect up to 50kg of cotton
a day. Children who fail to pick enough cotton or those who
pick low-quality cotton are punished with beatings, detention
or told that their grades will suffer. Children who run away
from the cotton fields, or who refuse to work, are threatened
with being expelled from school.”
• (from Anti-Slavery Website)

4. Experiences and Learning
• Theories of Learning
• Learning through abstract symbols (Minds as calculating
machines)
• Learning through experiences
• Experiences for Effective Learning (Gee, 2007)
•
•
•
•
•
Experience is structured by specific goals
Experience is interpreted
Getting immediate feedback during those experiences
Ample opportunities to apply previous experiences
Learn from the interpreted experiences and explanations of other
people

5. Situated Learning Matrix
• Identity – Way of Being in the World
• Shaped by goals, norms and/or values of one’s surrounding
communities
• Content Knowledge
• Certain set of skills, facts, principles and procedures
• Tools and Technologies
• Context
• Game as a goal-driven problem space that is one of a set of
similar but varied problems
(Gee 2007)

6. Gaming and the Future of Learning
• Games integrate knowing and doing
• Games bring together ways of:
•
•
•
•
•
Knowing (situated understanding)
Doing (effective social practice)
Being (powerful identities)
Caring (shared values that make someone an expert)
Thinking (of important communities of practice; or epistemic
frame)
(Shaffer et. al 2005)

7. New Media Literacy: Play
• Play
• From having fun to seriousness and engagement
• The player is motivated and willing to go through the grind
because there is a goal or purpose that matters to the person
• Games as a tool to motivate youth to learn other kinds of
content
• Games as a means of exploring and processing knowledge and
of problem-solving
(Jenkins et al. 2006)

8. Games and Procedural Rhetoric
• Verbal Rhetoric = Using oratory persuasively
• Visual Rhetoric = Using images persuasively
• Procedural Rhetoric: Practice of using processes persuasively,
the practice of authoring arguments through processes
• Its arguments are made not through the construction of words or
images, but through the authorship of rules of behavior, the
construction of dynamic models. In computation, those rules are
authored in code, through the practice of programming
(Bogost 2007)

9. Gaming for Educating
• Separatist Approach
• Integrative Approach
• The Transfer of Learning Approach
• Narrative Structure
• Binary Conflicts and Structure
• Role Playing
(Alexander, 2010)

10. Civilization III
• “Players must interpret and explain sequences of events in a
way that makes sense of NPC movements and actions, similar,
in a sense, to how a student must explain the causes of
historical conflict.”
• “A general Civilization III game can be instrumental when
confronting "big ideas" in a world history class. Why do
empires rise and fall? What drives conflicts between
competing empires? Spending a week or two
playing Civilization III and documenting one's strategy will
inevitably point to resource-acquisition and commercial
dominance as overarching causes of historical conflicts.”
• (2013 GLSS class notes)

11. Civic Potential of Video Games
• Questions about video games and civic engagement:
• Do teens that frequently play video games have higher or lower
levels of civic engagement than those who play less frequently?
• Are teens that have civic gaming experiences more committed to
and engaged in civic and political activity?
• How does the social context of game play relate to teen civic
engagement?
• How equitable is access to civic gaming experiences?
(Kahne et al. 2009)

12. Effective Civic Activities
•
•
•
•
Simulate civic and political activities
Voluntarily help others
Help guide or direct a given organization or group
Learn how governmental, political, economic, and legal
systems work
• Take part in open discussions of ethical, social, and political
issues
• Participate in clubs or organizations where young people have
the opportunity to practice productive group norms and to
form social networks

13. Civic Gaming Activities
• Helping or guiding other players
• Playing games where one learns about a problem in society
• Playing games that explore a social issue the player cares
about
• Playing a game where the player has to think about moral or
ethical issues
• Playing a game where the player helps make decisions about
how a community, city or nation should be run.
• Organizing game groups or guilds

14. Serious Games
• Serious video games, according to game producer and founder
of Games for Change (G4C) Barry Joseph (2010), simulate the
real world, motivate players, require decision-making, and
ultimately, educated them about an issue
• Serious video games manifest in a variety of forms, from
simulation training for combat to global warming policymaking to role-player games that involve being a journalist in a
war situation
(Gaudelli 2010)

15. Half the Sky Movement