The Physiology of Games: Option E

Judy Willis decided she could better understand the rising issue of ADD in the classroom by entering one herself. So she became a teacher and, for the next ten years, explored how best to accommodate students that were bored with the typical classroom setting. In the video and article, "A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool," Willis discusses the role of boredom, how it affects dopamine production, and why video games should be a model for teaching strategies.

Willis begins her inquiry by asking whether students today are suffering, at an alarming rate, from attention deficit disorder, or whether they are simply bored? She suggests that technologically savvy students are bored in the classroom. Boredom creates stress on the body. It triggers the same fight, flight, or freeze reaction as danger does for animals in the wild. This anxiety is problematic. Her first suggestion is to create a classroom environment that is comfortable, welcoming, and supportive. She also suggest using specific tools to show students that a particular lesson or idea is something that is very important. She does this by writing in a different color of ink or putting on a hat to let the students know that their attention should be raised without saying, "this is really important" and being ignored. She then begins to discuss dopamine motivation and how gaming reward systems create neurological feedback that supports learning and discovery.

Dopamine reward systems work to build skills by promoting pleasure responses. The article says:

"Dopamine response requires that people are aware that they solved a problem, figured out a puzzle, correctly answered a challenging question...This is why students need to use what they learn in authentic ways that allow them to recognize their progress as clearly as they see it when playing video games."

Willis next goes on to explain how video games perform this task. First, they always give access to incremental progress while working to the goal. This continuous feedback reinforces the brain to promote the pleasure centers in order to reward the continuous work. This kind of feedback and setting of incremental and attainable goals can be translated to the classroom. Students need to feel that what they are working on will help them get to a higher level of understanding and that the end game is worth the battle.

The next idea is individualized achievable challenges. Willis states, "when learners have opportunities to participate in learning challenges at their individualized achievable challenge level, their brains invest more effort tot the task and are more responsive to feedback. In this way, it is of the highest importance for teachers to accurately and continuously assess their students in order to build their challenges on their current level of proficiency. Students make gains as they accumulate knowledge and build stronger foundations in order to attain higher levels of progress. Pre-assessment and feedback are the stalwarts of creating these differentiated challenges for a classroom of unique students with a variety of intelligences. Teachers would be wise to learn from the video games that parents are complaining about as they mold their own lesson plans. The basic principles that can keep their students attention for hour after uninterrupted hour need to be utilized in the classroom. Students need feedback and consistent challenges to remain engaged in their work. But they must also feel that the end result is worth working towards.