Games • Learning • Society [classroom strategy guides?]

[Written yesterday at the airport]

Some educators take a break at the conference to play games.

I’m back at the airport, Madison, Wisconsin, on my way back home for a few hours and a good night’s sleep.  Then off to Louisiana.  I just saw Deborah Fields walking down the concourse and was reminded of her talk, at GLS, about cheat sites.  These are web sites created to collect and make available strategies and shortcuts for playing various video games.  The ones that she has studied were developed by youngsters who play Whyville, a MUVE for tweens.

I often suggest to teachers that they help their students to collaboratively create their own test study guides, using a wiki, instead of handing out teacher-made study guides.  They would work on their wiki pages as an ongoing part of the progressing unit of study.

While I was watching Deborah’s presentation, it occurred to me that study guides for tests are a lot like strategy guides for video games.

So, if I might take this to what some might say is an absurd conclusion, might my students gain something useful, if I allowed them to collaboratively create an online study guide for their test, and then allow them to use that web site as they take the test — and open-web test, so to speak.

OK, it will never work.  Too easy for the kids.  But I would suggest that if allowing students to create a strategy guide to use when taking their test would make the test too easy — perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions on the test.

14 thoughts on “Games • Learning • Society [classroom strategy guides?]”

  1. Dave,
    I’m not a fan of tests. As a student, I loved ’em. My brain worked that way. As a teacher, I don’t. Mainly, I am increasingly frustrated with the way I see teachers using tests.
    A wiki quide would be a great tool. If teachers are asking the right questions (synthesis, application, etc.), a wiki wouldn’t have the answers. They would have the basic info. and then have to do something with it.
    I’ve argued over and over again on open-book/note tests. Isn’t everything we do open-book?
    I know 5 phone numbers off the top of my head. I have over 100 stored in my phone. Are the phone numbers in my phone less important because I haven’t committed them to memory? No. I know where to look to find the answers. The phone holds the info. What I do with that info. after dialing is up to me.

  2. Zac,
    I couldn’t agree more about open book. If all we are doing is asking multiple choice questions (as in our state assessments), it is still considered open book because the answer is staring back at the student on the page. If they can’t find the answer when it is right in front of them, how can we be scared to let them use the book? 🙂
    If we start asking them questions that make them “use” the information rather than regurgitate it, we would be graduating a better future work force for every field of study. (Of course, we can’t do that because we don’t get paid enough to grade all those answers!)

  3. In a perfect world, students would be taking tests of application and systhesis questions…better preparing them for how things are in the RW. Unfortunately, I got so frustrated at the battles I had with parents when I attempted to ask a question on my test that were not word-for-word from the “study guide”. I still asked these questions, but it was an assignment, not an assessment. How do you explain this type of assessment to parents when all they want to see is the ‘A’?

  4. On some of the NYS Regents exams, you can “fail”, or even skip entirely, the essay questions yet pass the test courtesy of weighted multiple choice questions. Of course, content knowledge comes into play when considering possible answers, but is this an adequate assessment of critical thinking skills and subject mastery? What exactly are we measuring?

  5. Zac and Carolina have expressed the frustration of many teachers. Most of our “knowledge” is stored somewhere and we only carry around in our memory a few bits that allow us to look in the right place for it. How to find the right information and what to do with it should be the real test. When teachers assess students on their ability to problem solve through Bloom’s higher order skills we don’t have to worry about cheating.

  6. Don’t miss Gary’s post (see comment 8 ). It appears that he misses the point (or perhaps I do not make it clearly enough) that it isn’t the use of cheat sheets or strategy guides that intrigues me — it’s their construction. That’s where the learning is — the construction of an information product that is designed and crafted to be valuable in the face of a game or a test (or might they be the same).

    But I do REALLY like his line from Stager!

    Assessment schemes, like tests, are only necessary when teachers are not respected and when teachers don’t trust their own instincts.

  7. I also think that test guides will only make things easy for the students. If we want them to share the same creativity as those children who go to cheat sites, it could be about a discussion regarding answers to a test they’ve already taken.

  8. Strategy guides could create a change in their attitude towards taking exams. However, I think this positive opportunity also invites negative opportunities.

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