Emotional Educational Gaming

By Eleanor Hoskins — Posted on May 15, 2015

One of the buzzier words in the field of educational technology is “gamification”: the notion that making learning more like a game results in better results and a more positive experience for students. Two researchers in the instructional technology program at Ohio University have developed “The Things We Carry”, a free game that expands the scope of conventional attempts at educational gaming.

The game uses a location-based host app to guide students around the Ohio University campus, and ties together physical locations and objects into a nostalgic narrative about a fictional student’s graduation. The graduate students’ goal was to explore the amount of emotional investment it was possible to generate from a phone-based game. They speculate that the educational value of this type of this game could range from an immersive experience of literature, to a more place-based approach to learning, to a tool for writing reflection and inspiration (like Elegy for a Dead World).

Researchers used Gone Home, a heavily narrative-based game, to attempt to test for emotional understanding

However, “The Things We Carry” also represents a step in game design that has the potential to give students immersive, accessible and place-based lessons in emotional intelligence. As a recently published study in Social Psychological and Personality Science showed, participants who played games with immersive, emotionally charged narratives displayed slight improvements in their “theory of mind”, or their ability to assess the mental states of others. This skill is often overlooked in traditional educational settings, but many forward-thinking elementary programs have been developed to encourage emotional learning. These often use stories and activities to teach children strategies for making friends, helping others, resolving conflict, and being assertive. Emotional education programs have been proven in longitudinal studies to reduce future mental health issues and crime rates.

Strong video games allow players to make meaningful choices that shape the narrative and capture their imagination—a participatory dimension that many traditional forms of narrative and art lack. The interactivity and self-direction allowed by good gaming gives the player an opportunity to examine events and actions from a larger perspective outside the protagonist’s point of view. By making these lessons and skills in empathy more accessible and adaptable, educational technology could be a game-changer.

Additional Resources

Selected Games about Emotional Learning, Narrative and Writing