Appropriation of Civilization III

Appropriation of Civilization III

In both the Media and YWCA settings, students did not directly appropriate Civilization III as a means for studying world history; they first had to struggle with merely learning how to use the tool. Contrasting the learning trajectories of these two settings highlights the complexity and variability in how a tool is taken up and used. For the Media students, it took several class periods for students to understand even the most basic elements of game play, and 8-9 class periods before most could play fluidly. Some students withdrew from the unit before even making it this far, and a handful of the students who stuck with it until the end were still confused with basic concepts and had only a cursory understanding of the game fundamentals.⁵⁵ In the YWCA case, these struggles to merely learn how to play the game were far less pronounced. Students were briefly confused at first but soon were able to diagnose and solve their own problems within a few hours. Students had more prolonged interactions with the game interrupted by fewer technology failures and rudimentary confusions about, for example, how to navigate the interface. That the YWCA students took to Civilization III much quicker and more easily than the Media students might be surprising given that the YWCA students were younger, not required to participate in the unit, and not graded on their failure or success. At both sites, however, it is hard to overstate the mismatch between students’ game skills and the game’s complexity; even late in the unit, students in both contexts still had questions about fundamental concepts used in the game (e.g., irrigation). One place this mismatch became most apparent (and most disadvantageous to learning) was in moments of failure.

Failure is endemic to any game; it is through trying a strategy, watching it fail, figuring out where and why it went wrong, and then modifying it accordingly and giving it another go that players become engaged in and adept at a game’s underlying rule systems. Across both instructional contexts, students’ biggest difficulty was in unpacking why they lost. When a student’s city revolted, they had difficulty making connections between their citizens’ happiness, their economy, tax rates, and the amount of goods and luxuries available. Students looked for “easy fixes,” places where they could adjust one variable to reverse their fortunes. Yet, playing Civilization III is a much more complex activity where players must learn to think systemically about several different interacting factors affecting a civilization’s growth at once. Students needed support in interpreting the causes of their failure, making inferences about the game system based on it, and then devising solutions. Most Civilization III players do. The difference here, however, is that, in these contexts, the students relied heavily on instructors⁵⁶ for help rather than game manuals, the Civilopedia, online fan-sites, or (crucially) other gamers. Students rejected the tutorials and game manuals outright, yet also lacked a rich enough repertoire of game concepts and strategies to either interpret their failures in the game in meaningful ways or assist their peers in doing so. There were inadequate materials (i.e. tutorials, cheat sheets) for supporting game play within the classrooms studied, and thus a contradiction emerged between the students’ novice ability to play Civilization III and the lack of resources available for them to learn the game. Better resources for remediating students’ understanding of and facility with Civilization III as a tool might speed its appropriation and reduce students’ difficulty with the unit.

Buying Into the Purpose of the Tool

The first week or two of activity at the Media School were full of contradictions, marked by anxiety for the researcher and confusion for students as they negotiated the boundaries of the emergent activity system. The researchers were foreigners entering a close-knit school culture with an agenda of using Civilization III, a complex computer game, in order to help students learn world history. Many students at the Media School initially rejected this activity, much as they rejected school-based history education or most any externally-mandated activity that was not perceived to be in their immediate best interests. Even for those students who were gamers, it took a few days before Civilization III was appropriated as a tool for gaming, let alone as a tool for learning history. In addition to feeling that the game was too complex and difficult, many students did not see how it could help them in school or real life.

The shift in classroom culture toward the end of the second week in the Media class (case one) demonstrates the importance of understanding and “buying into” the purpose of the tool. After drawing the map of the world on the board, explaining where students’ in-game civilizations were on the map, and making links between the curriculum and the game explicit, students finally started to find value in the game. For many students, it appeared that part of this new revaluing of Civilization was discovering that it could be used as a tool for hypothetical history. Other students never quite made this connection. By late in the unit (case one), however, game play and historical inquiry had become enmeshed. Students began asking historical and geographical questions in the context of game play, using geography and history as tools for their game, and drawing inferences about social phenomena based on their play.

Throughout the research conducted with the Media students (case one and two), these complex activity patterns in which historical inquiry and game play fed into one another became more and more prevalent. Nevertheless, it was not until very late in the formal school unit (case one), or perhaps even into the week of summer camp (case two), that students began appropriating Civilization III as a tool for studying world history.

Even then, not every student appropriated the game for this purpose of learning about world history. Those students who did not see Civilization III as a useful tool for understanding history resisted, even rejected, its use. For example, students rejected classroom discussions, debriefings, and using log sheets. In the subsequent summer camp (case two), the demands of the presentation drove students toward reflecting on and learning from their play activities; however, the game still competed with the presentation activity over students’ attention. In Wertsch’s (1998) work, he describes how one cannot assume that just because an individual uses a tool that they have appropriated it. He writes, “Cultural tools are not always facilitators of mediated action, and agents do not invariably accept and use them; rather, an agent’s stance toward a mediational means is characterized by resistance or even outright rejection” (p. 144). Given the game’s steep learning curve and the level of commitment it therefore exacts from those just learning how to play it, it is not surprising that some students resisted it outright, either playing it only for pleasure or completely withdrawing from the activity. Moreover, the broader context of the game unit was one in which history itself was not taught, not included in the examinations, and therefore framed as a topic of little value, particularly in terms of graduating from school. Thus, there was an implicit contradiction between investment in learning to play the game to (eventually) learn something about history and the broader curricular goals within the school. This, in part, caused a tension between the students’ goals and the goals of the instructor and researchers. The purpose of the instructor’s just-in-time lectures and discussions was to resolve this contradiction by creating opportunities for learning within the context of game play.

In the YWCA case (case three), Civilization III more easily fit into the encompassing activity systems and students showed much less resistance to appropriating it.,⁵⁷ not just as a tool for entertainment but, more critically, as a tool for learning. That this same group showed less trouble appropriating how to use the tool seems no coincidence. As Wertsch (1998) might suggest, being able to use the tool and buying into its purposes seem to go hand in hand. While students still struggled at times with the game mechanics or understanding the causes of their failure, they did not resist the encompassing activity system or the primary purpose of playing the game as a way to learn world history. Because the camp was a computer enrichment camp, there was no contradiction for students between the large investment that learning to play the game required and the broader program purpose. Still, there were contradictions between the students’ goals and the instructors’ goals with the former focused on learning to play the game and the latter pushing students to use the game as a way to learn about history. For example, many of the questions students asked were about how to play the game, as opposed to questions about history. On the one hand, the curricular demands and students’ expectations of an after-school enrichment camp were less than those of the Media students (cases one and two), and therefore the contradiction was less powerful in driving activity. On the other hand, students still resisted guided game play, discussion, or reflection activities, as evidenced when one students shouted, “Can’t we just play the game?” As in the Media case (cases one and two), this contradiction was partially diminished by the instructor creating opportunities for learning in the context of game play through just-in-time lectures and discussions.