The earliest way many of us were introduced to games in the classroom was through content games or “edutainment.” Memories of my childhood are rife with Number Munchers, Oregon Trail (yes, I included a link where you can legally play that gem), and Reader Rabbit. This type of games purports to teach specific information. Traditionally (as in the above examples) content games were limited largely to young childhood education and to basic concepts.
To clarify exactly what these games are doing, we can turn to the traditional pedagogical differentiation between content and method. As Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner note in Teaching as a Subversive Activity:
Consider as a primary case in point the notion that a classroom lesson is largely made up of two components: content and method. The content may be trivial or important, but if is always thought to be the 'substance' of the lesson; it is what the student are there to 'get'; it is what they are supposed to learn; it is what is 'covered'. Content, as any syllabus proves, exists independent of and prior to the student, and is indifferent to the media by which it is 'transmitted'. Method, on the other hand, is merely the manner in which the content is presented. The method may be imaginative or dull, but it is never more than a means of conveying the content (18).
They are, of course, talking about a traditional view of class design that they hope to subvert, but the differentiation still stands as a structure worth attention. In most classroom environments, teachers first figure out what they need to teach (which is usually determined by written institutional expectations) and only then decide how they will teach it. Content games come into this process in the method step by reconfiguring old lesson plans into the form of interactive digital media.
But more interesting things are being done with games in content courses than just teaching the same lesson as always. Sometimes, teachers are repurposing existing games to the purpose of the course. This can be seen in the video below about Matthew Powers, who used Spore (a videogame in which players design and evolve creatures) as a structure to build content around.
Composition + Content?
Creating a content game for composition would not be easy. It would almost certainly have to focus on information like that which is found in the textbooks. Most often, I’ve seen this in the form of interactive web tutorials, which seem to fall a little short on the playful nature of games (including those I've built). These tutorials could focus on any number of topics, such as creating effective transitions, developing paragraphs, or expanding invention strategies. Most often, however, they seem to focus on lower level concerns like mechanics or grammar, though some do get as far as essay structure.
The challenge moving forward is for these interactive modules to move beyond tutorials and become more game-like. For more on an attempt to create a Composition Class Content game, take a look at the Rhetorical Peaks page. One possibility we might consider is how existing games might be repurposed. See my discussion of L.A. Noire for more on this.
Works Cited
Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching As a Subversive Activity. Delta, 1971. Print.
Quentin, Jeane. "Creatures Classified!: Mathew Powers on Turning Students into Intergalactic Speciologists in Spore." Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. MacArthur Foudnation. 10/26/10. Web.
Additional Source:
"Writing Tutorials." CUNY. Web. - Perhaps the most impressive collection of free writing tutorials I've found online. The CUNY website includes interactive tutorials across the whole range of writing processes.