Finding a cannon of games that we’ve all shared is unlikely, but I hope we’ve at least played Scrabble?

Scrabble was designed to be a fun, commercial game, yet it also happens to teach writing skills.

What is the pace of a Scrabble game? Turns are usually pretty rapid, and players can be forced to move faster by the use of timers. More central to Scrabble however is the use of random letter tiles to generate possible words. Therefore, players access the content of the game randomly; in fact, the randomness is most of the game. Scrabble’s other big mechanics are the rewards (like the double or triple-letter scoring mechanisms) and the rivals, often your friends, who you are trying to outscore. Many commercial games, such as Mad Libs and Trivial Pursuit, use this same breakdown of simple mechanics to drive their engagement factor, though Mad Libs does not use rewards and (like Scrabble) it does not have roles either. Roles are the rarest mechanic in commercial writing games, but because of their learning value, they should be incorporated wherever possible. In fact, I believe that the main reason adults enjoy playing trivia games in competitive public settings like bars is because they can compete as a team, and each friend is usually better at a particular category (Sports, Pop Culture, History) than somebody else, so a successful answer fills a player with the self-importance of his or her role.

PACE = RAPID

Rapid paces are achieved by using timers, or getting the most correct in a space of time. The correlation between rapidness and learning may seem odd to you... yet giving your exercise a rapid pace means you’ll have to change how you present it, and that change causes a few of Gee’s learning principles to pop out: information on-demand and just-in-time, and the sandbox principle of performance before competence. Also, a rapid pace allows students to have “fast access” to the subject, which is one of Prensky’s engagement principles.

Can rushing through a subject still result in learning? Absolutely. Prof. Christa Baida, Chair of the Composition Committee at CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College, spoke to me about how games encourage a low-stakes, friendly competitive environment which “makes the practice experience positive, lightens the students up, mitigates the embarrassment of not already knowing the answer. But it’s not all about helping the students.” Giving an exercise a playful pace, she adds, can also allow an instructor to see her own exercise with fresh eyes. “Honestly, it even keeps me from getting bored, which means I’ll be more engaged in my next lesson plan.” (Personal communication, December 1st, 2010).

PACE = RANDOM

Random paces to your exercises occur when students are mixing up pieces of paper, shuffling cards or letters in a bag, rolling dice, deciphering a maze or puzzle, etc. The random simple mechanic introduces students to assignments through random access and multi-tasking (Prensky’s principles) and performance before competence (Gee’s principle). One day I felt particularly uninspired, and I brought nothing fancier than a bag of dice to class, telling the students that for every set of six workbook questions, they only had to answer one, which corresponded to the number they rolled on the die. So the students rolled and scribbled their answers. Later, I apologized to one of my more advanced students for my pathetic attempt to spruce up the day’s assignment. “But I really liked that exercise, professor,” he said. “How could it have been fun?” I responded. “It was barely a game!” He seemed a little confused, then his face lit up, “Yeah, but it was random, professor. And I really like random.”

GOAL = ROLES

Roles include thematic identities, like the student we assigned to play Hamlet, or knowledge distribution, such as on team projects where one student might take charge of editing the grammar, another the argument, and another the transitions. Since roles allow a student to take a unique perspective on an assignment, roles lead to Gee’s learning principles of identity, situated meanings, and well-ordered problems. There are no particular Prensky principles at work here, though you could certainly add Prenskian levels of interactivity to an exercise involving roles.

GOAL = RIVALS

Rivals include another student, another team of students, the game itself, or the teacher! Including rivals in your exercise will always give the student frequent feedback on her progress (feedback is a kind of Prenskian “frequent rewards”) and just-in-time information. Rivals also lead to students co-designing the content with more motivation (since students will be challenging each other with that content), and a little competition can often encourage performance before competence (though, as in any small group structure, if one student is dominating the answers, this kind of risk-taking can also be shut down).

GOAL = REWARDS

Rewards are usually given in the form of game points, candy, or extra-credit. As Prensky has discussed, students love rewards; I believe this is because even extrinsic rewards carry a valuable kind of emotional feedback. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that the promise of such feedback in games greatly encourages students (even shy students) to demonstrate risk-taking and performance before competence. However, be careful; some teachers who use games have found that rewards must never be that significant, else your high-stakes games could actually end up discouraging students.

How do we implement these important mechanics in our lessons? One way is to simply pick an educational commercial game, since commercial games are bundles of simple mechanics. I’ll now present you a list of the best commercially-available games for teaching basic composition skills. Afterwards, I’ll discuss games that teach more advanced composition techniques.