Online video game will aim to teach Chinese language, culture

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Online video game will aim to teach Chinese language, culture
Published April 26, 2006
by JOSH JARMAN

Made flash cards of vocabulary words? Check. Read study terms in textbook?
Check. Played online video game with friends? Check? When MSU announced a
new partnership with the Chinese government Monday to create the MSU
Confucius Institute, which will offer online language courses in Mandarin
Chinese, it also embarked on a new concept in education. Working with the
China Central Radio and Television University in Beijing, MSU officials
are creating an online immersive video game environment to help students
learn Chinese language and culture.

"This concept is many years ahead of its time," said Yong Zhao, director
of the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence and an MSU
education professor. Carrie Heeter, director of the MSU Communication
Technology Laboratory, believes games in education will increasingly
become part of academic teaching tools in the future because they are
deeply engaging. She said even commercial games require high levels of
complex learning in order to master them. "Games teach important skills
like problem solving and teamwork," Heeter said. She said the potential of
games as learning tools has been unrealized thus far, because there are
not many games in this category. Interactive, multi-player games fit very
well with long-standing educational theories, she said.

"We individually and socially construct knowledge," Heeter said. "When we
talk about the concepts of better teaching, we can see these (concepts) in
the games, as well." Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media
Studies at the University of Minnesota, and her colleague at Minnesota,
Professor Kathleen Hansen, have developed a role-playing simulation for
use in some of their journalism classes. The pair helped create a
customized adventure using the popular Neverwinter Nights fantasy
role-playing game by BioWare Corp., but converted the sword and sorcery
world into a small U.S. town confronted with a hazardous chemical spill.
Students play the role of rookie reporters at the town's newspaper and
navigate through the world by interviewing sources and working with
editors. The students complete their "adventure" by writing a news story
on deadline.

"We were excited because the students really talked about the decisions
and deliberated every move in the game," Paul said. "It really reinforced
the book learning." Paul said the students got what the instructors wanted
them to get out of the experience, which was to practice what they had
learned in class in a safe game environment. Hansen said this idea of
using video games to supplement student learning is just starting to
unfold in U.S. academic circles, but the concept would accelerate in the
future.

"We are at the beginning of a trend," Hansen said. "This will look like
stone knives and bear skins in five years' time." Zhao and his team at the
U.S.-China center have been developing a video game for MSU's partnership
with China that allows students to travel through a virtual world of
Chinese culture, learning how to interact with other characters as they
improve their language skills. The game begins in a rural Chinese village,
and the player must master some beginning Chinese vocabulary to earn
enough experience to move to the city.

The game works because it teaches players in a social environment, Zhao
said, with players interacting in an online world. The format allows
players to help each other learn, and get more experience while doing it.
He said he hopes to have a version ready for about 200 play-testers before
late December. The purpose is not to replace traditional teaching methods,
but to supplement them, Zhao said. "The most important thing is
motivation," Zhao said. "Working hard to achieve a goal is intrinsic in a
game. In this game, you use language to achieve your goals and access more
content."

Kirby Milton, chief technology officer for the Michigan Virtual
University, said he was eager to add the game to supplement the existing
online Chinese language classes currently being piloted and will start
this fall as part of the MSU Confucius Institute. He said the online
environment has proven effective. "It's a very powerful learning tool,"
Milton said, adding that his daughter is currently enrolled in the online
pilot program. He said Kara, a sophomore at East Lansing High School,
reflects today's high school student in that she is quite comfortable
around technology. "She's been working on a personal computer since she
was 2 years old,"  Milton said. "It's her preferred method of learning."


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