Thursday, December 8, 2011

Today’s Class: Video Games 101

It would seem that every now and then you’ll hear of another education provider who has hit the breaking point with the boring monotony of traditional teaching. Only when the teacher reaches this point will they receive the epiphany that games, being highly engaging, can and should be used to teach.

The latest case comes from engineering professor Brianno Coller at the Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. One day he realized that “he didn't like slogging through dry math problems as an instructor any more than he had as a student.” Coller designed a virtual racing game that would have students build their cars and be exposed to the math that they would otherwise be reading from a textbook.

According to Coller, "I use games to, in some sense, throw away the textbook. My philosophy is that learning can be a burdensome chore or it can be an interesting journey."