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Video games as teaching mediums?


ArmchairPhysicist

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So after seeing a post about a pilot that says that KSP helped to ingrain a knowledge of flight mechanics that allowed him to pass a test, I realized something. KSP has taught me more about orbital mechanics and why space flights do what they do than any book or article on the internet. Which makes me think, how effective is it to use a reality based video game to help teach a concept? The best way to learn something is to force you to use that skill, you can read about orbital insertions all day long, but the average student will never use that knowledge, and will likely forget it. KSP allows you to learn orbital physics and rocket science (not so scary anymore) and to practice these skills without dying horribly in a fireball. Anyone else have KSP to thank for learning more about flight than years of book reading ever taught you?

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2 minutes ago, ArmchairPhysicist said:

Never said I thought it would be useful, simply said that it's a good way to learn about space travel.

Thats cool :) it sure is great.

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Simulation games tend to do that. MS Flightsim is famous for shorting training needs for pilots, the US Army adapted Close Combat (itself an adaptation of the Advanced Squad Leader tabletop game) for a reason, and I'm pretty sure race car drivers use racing games to familiarize themselves with racetracks these days.

 

Where things get interesting—and this is something KSP excels at—is when the game is a motivation for the players to dive deeper into a subject. When I was a teenager my English tended to be really bad. Then I discovered Scott Adam's adventures and I was locked up in the attic every night, armed with dictionaries (despite what they are trying to tell you at school, learning a language is 85% vocabulary. And 10% idiom). When my teacher told me I needed an A for my final exam English (I borked Literature), I arrogantly told her I'd get an A+ and I did.

KSP "tricks" players into getting better at math and physics, and "self-driven" motivation is the best kind there is.

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I started playing KSP in late highschool and when I got to uni and had to take a class on orbital mechanics it was a breeze. There's a huge difference in the learning curve between 'doing the math and understanding what happens' versus 'actually doing it first and understanding the math later'

Edited by natsirt721
fixed words
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The learning curve can be steep (if not, steeper than whatever EVE ONLINE attempts to prove :D), but not impossible. 

I wish more people would play KSP, because it really gives respect to the space race era and technology. However, I've noticed it is quite difficult on it's own just to explain people at my university just what is KSP about. You tell them the raw basics and they just go "What" or "Meh, moving on, you weirdo". 

/shrugs

But it CAN be used to educate. Just need to jam it down throats and smack the KSP manual on people's faces a few more times till they get it. :)

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25 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

In 1 and a half years, KSP has taught me more about space and science than school has in my entire life. That's all I have to say.

Schools don't teach enough about space, only thing I was though about space was in 3rd grade basic stuff like solar system etc. They rather teach about a guy that died 1200 years ago

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Video games in general are excellent educators. Many of the criticisms of the statistics about video games and their effects on the mind are likely due to generational differences. Statistics show that gamers, on average, have much higher ability to multitask, have more precise motor control, and have higher critical thinking skills.

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1 minute ago, Tex said:

Video games in general are excellent educators. Many of the criticisms of the statistics about video games and their effects on the mind are likely due to generational differences. Statistics show that gamers, on average, have much higher ability to multitask, have more precise motor control, and have higher critical thinking skills.

My experience with students in my high school is the exact opposite of this. 

The heavy video games players are antisocial, unwashed and tired looking young men who are addicted to their game so that they neglect their school work, friends and family. Most wouldn't know what a girl was if one jumped out and bit them. 

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10 minutes ago, Foxster said:

My experience with students in my high school is the exact opposite of this. 

The heavy video games players are antisocial, unwashed and tired looking young men who are addicted to their game so that they neglect their school work, friends and family. Most wouldn't know what a girl was if one jumped out and bit them. 

Ah, but addiction is a different thing entirely. There can be differences from being locked in a room and playing every moment of one's free time, but in general, those who play video games score higher in the areas I mentioned. Certainly, most gamers won't be winning any Olympic medals or bodybuilding championships.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/despite-delays-boeings-starliner-moving-steadily-toward-the-launch-pad/

Last October, during a White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, President Obama sat down in a simulator of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which will begin transporting astronauts to the International Space Station within a couple of years. ... So when I sat down in the same simulator on a recent Friday morning at the FIRST Robotics Competition in Houston, I felt a little pressure to match the president's success. ...

Fortunately, I had an experienced hand in the copilot's seat in the person of Dan Nelson. He is Boeing's guidance, navigation, and control technical lead engineer and has worked extensively to develop the systems that allow Starliner to safely fly to the station. As we moved toward the international laboratory at a fraction of a meter per second, Nelson gave me advice on controlling the spacecraft during its approach. A little more thrust. Move up. That kind of thing.

After we nailed the docking—saving the station from billions of dollars in damage and myself from humiliation—Nelson still chided me a bit. "These kids," he said, looking around at the milling students participating in the robotics competition, "are pretty good at this without any help. Especially the ones who play Kerbal Space Program."

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This post from the blog of Dr. Richard Bartle, inventor of the MMORPG, says it all for me.

http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2006/QBlog030406A.html

TLDR: Games teach facts, not skills. They teach incidentally, not directly. Games that make what they want to teach the core mechanic of the game will fail (ie, you can't win the boss battle without solving the popup equation 2+2=4), but games will succeed by letting you play without the learning but make it handy to know (You have four shots with which to kill the boss, but you can combine them into sets of two to be more powerful. If you do, you'll figure out quickly that you only have two shots and that 2+2=4). If you focus on the fun, education can fend for itself; if you focus on the education, you won't get fun education but rather an unfun game.

In KSP terms, you can play perfectly happily without reading the background or knowing the math, but if you do it will help you enjoy it, and before long you'll understand what periapse and apoapse are, and why they're important - without cracking a book.

I have learned more about the technicalities of space travel from KSP than from reading a dozen astronaut memoirs. I'm glad to have read those memoirs, but they didn't teach me in the same way KSP does, and now I've learned I can reread them with greater appreciation. I have no math skills and could not possibly have learned this stuff from a conventional physics text.

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