In his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee derives a set of learning principles from his study of the complex, self-directed learning each game player undertakes as s/he encounters and masters a new game. He suggests that adherence to these principles could transform learning in schools, colleges and universities, both for teachers and faculty and, most importantly, for students.
1) Active, Critical Learning Principle
All aspects
of the the learning environment (including ways in which the semiotic domain is
designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical, not
passive, learning
2) Design Principle
Learning about and coming to
appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience
3) Semiotic Principle
Learning about and coming to
appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images,
words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the
learning experience
4) Semiotic Domains Principle
Learning involves
mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at
some level, in the affinity group or groups connected to them.
5) Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain
Principle
Learning involves active and critical thinking about the
relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains
6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle
Learners
can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered
7) Committed Learning Principle
Learners
participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) as an
extension of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to
which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find
compelling
8) Identity Principle
Learning involves
taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner
has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample
opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and
old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate,
and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual
identity, and a projective identity
9) Self-Knowledge Principle
The virtual world is
constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but also
about themselves and their current and potential capacities
10) Amplification of Input Principle
For a little
input, learners get a lot of output
11) Achievement Principle
For learners of all
levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to
each learner's level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner's
ongoing achievements
12) Practice Principle
Learners get lots and lots
of practice in a context where the practice is not boring (i.e. in a virtual
world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners
experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.
13. Ongoing Learning Principle
The distinction
between the learner and the master is vague, since learners, thanks to the
operation of the "regime of competency" principle listed next, must, at higher
and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to new or changed
conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization, undoing
automatization, and new re-organized automatization
14) "Regime of Competence" Principle
The learner
gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her
resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not
"Undoable"
15) Probing Principle
Learning is a cycle of
probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on
this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis;
and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis
16) Multiple Routes Principle
There are multiple
ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make choices, rely
on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem-solving, while also
exploring alternative styles
17) Situated Meaning Principle
The meanings of
signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols, texts, etc.) are situated in
embodied experience. Meanings are not general or decontextualized. Whatever
generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up cia embodied
experience
18) Text Principle
Texts are not understood purely
verbally (i.e. only in terms of the definitions of the words in the text and
their text-internal relationships to each other) but are understood in terms of
embodied experience. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied
experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading texts apart from embodied
action) comes only when learners have enough embodied experience in the domain
and ample experiences with similar texts
19) Intertextual Principle
The learner understands
texts as a family ("genre") of related texts and understands any one text in
relation to others in the family, but only after having achieved embodied
understandings of some texts. Understanding a group of texts as a family
("genre") of texts is a large part of what helps the learner to make sense of
texts
20) Multimodal Principle
Meaning and knowledge ate
built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions,
abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words
21) "Material Intelligence" Principle
Thinking,
problem-solving and knowledge are "stored" in material objects and the
environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things while
combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored in
material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects
22) Intuitive Knowledge Principle
Intuitive or
tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often in
association with an affinity group, counts a good deal and is honored. Not just
verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded
23) Subset Principle
Learning even at its start
takes place in a (simplified) subset of the real domain
24) Incremental Principle
Learning situations are
ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead to generalizations that
are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more complex cases later, the
learning space (the number and type of guess the learner can make) is
constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations the learned has
founded earlier
25) Concentrated Sample Principle
The learner
sees, especially early on, many more instances of the fundamental signs and
actions than should be the case in a less controlled sample. fundamental signs
and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get to
practice them often and learn them well
26) Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle
Basic skills
are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts as a basic
skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the game/domain or
games/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a given type of
game/domain
27) Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time
Principle
The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and
just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the
information can best be understood and used in practice
28) Discovery Principle
Overt telling is kept to a
well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunities for the learner to
experiment and make discoveries
29) Transfer Principle
Learners are given ample
opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned
earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and
transforming that earlier learning
30) Cultural Models about the World
Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think
consciously and reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the
world, without denigration of their identities, abilities or social
affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or
otherwise relate to them in various ways
31) Cultural Models about Learning
Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think
consciously and reflectively about their cultural models about learning and
themselves as learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or
social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves
as learners
32) Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains
Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think
consciously and reflectively about their cultural models about a particular semiotic
domain they are learning, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or
social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models about this domain
33) Distributed Principle
Meaning/knowledge is
distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols, technologies, and the
environment
34) Dispersed Principle
Meaning/knowledge is
dispersed in the sense that the learner shares it with others outside the
domain/game, some of whom the learner may rarely or never see face-to-face
35) Affinity Group Principle
Learners constitute
an "affinity group," that is, a group that is bonded primarily through shared en
devours, goals, and practices and not shared race, gender, nation, ethnicity, or
culture
36) Insider Principle
The learner is an "insider,"
"teacher," and "producer" (not just a consumer) able to customize the learning
experience and the domain/game from the beginning and throughout the
experience.
*Drawn from Gee, James Paul, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2003 From http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/jamespaulgee2print.html
"Semiotics" is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
Note that the 36 learning principles are introduced by Gee in chapters with these topics or themes:
General Principles and Semiotic Understanding | 1-5 |
Identity and Competence | 6-11 + 12-14 |
Situated Learning | 15-18 + 19-22 |
Telling and Doing | 23-29 |
Cultural Learning | 30-32 |
Social Learning | 33-36 |
Marc Prensky in a review of Gee's learning principles reworded them in a simpler way:
1. Doing and reflecting 2. Appreciating good design 3. Seeing interrelationships 4. Mastering game language 5. Relating the game world to other worlds 6. Taking risks with reduced consequences 7. Putting out effort because they care 8. Combining multiple identities 9. Watching their own behavior 10. Getting more out than what they put in 11. Being rewarded for achievement 12. Being encouraged to practice 13. Having to master new skills at each level 14. Tasks being neither too easy nor too hard. 15. Doing, thinking and strategizing 16. Getting to do things their own way 17. Discovering meaning 18. Reading in context 19. Relating information 20. Meshing information from multiple media 21. Understanding how knowledge is stored 22. Thinking intuitively 23. Practicing in a simplified setting 24. Being led from easy problems to harder ones 25. Mastering upfront things needed later 26. Repeating basic skills in many games 27. Receiving information just when it is needed 28. Trying rather than following instructions 29. Applying learning from problems to later ones 30. Thinking about the game and the real world 31. Thinking about the game and how they learn 32. Thinking about the games and their culture 33. Finding meaning in all parts of the game 34. Sharing with other players 35. Being part of the gaming world 36. Helping others and modifying games, in addition to just playing.
Marc Prensky (2003) "Escape from Planet Jar-Gon - Or, What Video Games Have to Teach Academics About Teaching And Writing - A Review of What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee", On The Horizon, Vol. 11 No 3. [Online Copy - PDF Format