Replaying history: learning world history through playing

Taken-as-Shared Meanings

Two more key understandings emerged among students playing in the Americas. The first was that American tribes could attempt to pre-empt European settlement of the Americas by reaching the old world first and making contact with several civilizations, allowing them to trade technologies and gain a supply of horses. At first, most students playing in the Americas simply wanted to build a civilization, particularly a defense to hold off colonizers (who most students assumed would be Europeans). Once the Celts landed on the shores of Nova Scotia in Dan’s game, students realized that they would need to gain technologies and trade for horses if they hoped to survive. As a result, students realized that they could reach other continents by “reverse engineering” either the Native American migrations across the Bering Strait or Viking voyages across the North Atlantic (along Greenland). Students playing as the Iroquois paid close attention to each others’ games as they played out these game experiments (and this information did not flow to Kent, who was playing as the Egyptians and not attending to other games by late in the week). Eventually, they learned that such voyages were hypothetically possible, but that gaining horses or trading technologies alone were not enough to compete with the Europeans.

A second taken as shared understanding was colonial rhetoric as a means of justifying colonial expansion in South America. As students wrestled with how to treat the Polynesians, an argument emerged for liberating the Polynesians from their backward way of life: their lives would improve as a result of being Iroquois. Students took a perverse joy in the thought of Native American tribes conquering other civilizations and justifying it as benevolent. Central to this understanding was students’ reflexive awareness of what they were doing and saying. Tony joked and shared in this talk, although eventually he and Jason both tried to spare the Polynesians in order to trade with them. Both had also learned that trading with other civilizations was a critical factor in obtaining technologies, gaining resources and the eventual colonization of the Americas.

Limitations in Facilitating Conceptual Understandings

That students did not develop robust understandings of these concepts should be somewhat obvious. The exact nature of most of these concepts (e.g., monarchy) are less important in the game than what you can do with them. In other words, students do not need to know what monarchy was or have any sense of what the specific socio-political arrangements were that we have come to label as monarchy. They do need to know monarchy’s effects on their civilization (i.e. decreased corruption, increased trade capacity).

In part, this is because most concepts represent new game capacities, and are introduced with very little historical explanation. The Civilopedia describes these terms, but ultimately they are cleaved from the historical referents from which they arose (See Figure 7.1). This explanation is a generally accepted definition, basically a simplified encyclopedia entry and not far from a standard middle school textbook definition. A few words, such as sanction, alleviate, or ameliorate were difficult for these students to comprehend.

Figure 7-1 Contradictions that emerged in Media Case

Overwhelmingly, the most common student practice in each setting was asking a teacher or researcher about game concepts. In one twenty to thirty minute period in the Media summer case (case two), I was asked about: theology, steam power, free artistry, coastal fortresses, mutual protection pacts, wealth, the corporation, embargoes, astronomy, refining, espionage, and cavalry, as well as if threatening other civilizations had an impact on diplomacy, and what happened when the game ran out of names for new cities. These questions ranged from simples queries about terms (e.g., What is the Colossus?) or geographical facts (e.g., Is there oil in Greenland?) to functional questions (e.g., What are the effects of democracy?) to procedural questions (e.g., How do I improve trade?) to questions about the game as a simulation (e.g., Does the game include World War I?). In the Media case (case one) in particular, the teachers and I were encouraged by the sheer volume of sincere questions that students posed – a stark contrast to their typical behavior in school.

Very rarely, however, did students ask “why” questions about history (with a notable exception being Marvin, who brought his book to class to find out why the Roman Empire fell). More often, I would introduce historical narratives, such as the colonization of the Americas or the causes of World War I, as tools providing insights into their games. These situations allowed me to interject new understandings or information into the activity system. In combination with answering the volume of question the students posed, however, these activities placed great demands on my time. Finding ways to embed more of this information into students’ artifacts, environment, and activities – for example, rewriting the Civilopedia, creating job aids, or doing more formal question asking and answering activities — would be advantageous.

Failure Fosters Conceptual Learning

Much of this impetus for learning game concepts came through failure. Failure to generate trade, balance budgets, or perhaps most importantly, anticipate an opponent’s move forced many students to confront gaps or flaws in their current understandings. As Tony explained, “Playing the game forces you to learn about the material. It actually forces you to learn about other civilizations in order to survive.”⁶⁰ For Tony, this meant understanding who the Celts were, where they came from, what resources they were likely to have, and how he might exploit his natural resources in North America in order to compete. Students across both cases confronted similar challenges. Recall Andrea’s struggles to fend off the Greeks and subsequent exploration to find out who the Greeks were and where they originated, or Jason’s exploration of Greenland, or Ricky’s hunting Mongolian barbarians, or Dwayne’s sailing for Japan, or Bill’s exploring Africa for resources, or Kent asking Dwayne about Rome, or Marvin’s exploration of Europe to anticipate where other rival civilizations originated. Learning through game play occurred through a process of identifying problems, analyzing their causes, marshalling resources to bring to bear on the problem, implementing solutions, examining the consequences of those solutions, and then trying new strategies.

One of the clearest patterns among students was a general movement away from simple, one variable solutions to problems (i.e. create entertainers to make citizens happy) that require more complex solutions that incorporated several variables. Learning occurred through cycles of problem identification, developing causal interpretations of events (such as what caused a student to lose a game), brainstorming possible solutions (possibly drawing from knowledge of history or geography), implementing solutions, examining results, and repeating. Solutions to these problems became more and more complex as students started perceiving domestic happiness issues as the result of more and more factors (available luxuries, entertainment, luxuries, religion, and economics). The more that students played the more that they saw these problems as resulting from several inter-related forces. Long-term success in the game demanded that students examine the causes of game events as determined by several game systems and devise solutions that leveraged the affordances of each game system. Restated, students realized that they could not get far addressing problems one at a time, but instead needed to design elegant solutions that addressed multiple needs. B y the end of the Media camp, students all agreed that a major understanding to emerge was that “you can’t separate geography from economics from politics.” As Chris said, Civilization III prompted these students to see how different systems fit together.

There was a direct connection between students’ learning and participation in what I have called recursive play, that is, play where the student analyzes her game play, develops new strategies, and evaluates their effectiveness. Students who tried numerous strategies developed systemic level understandings more often than those students who simply played through their games uncritically, or who did not go back and try new strategies. Trying multiple strategies forced them to commit to hypotheses about the game system and then experience the consequence of decisions. Recursive play seemed to be a pre-condition to systemic-level game understandings, which then in turn, frequently led to connections between world history and their game play.