ABSTRACT:
This research will show that video games make an impact on adolescent students’ education by improving memory, critical-thinking, problem solving, and reading skills. Video games allow gamers to express themselves through the roles and responsibilities the games curate. Players think critically about the game’s simulation while gaining knowledge from the game’s environment and solve problems through trial and error. The research examined showed that gamers did better than non-gamers in a number of basic cognitive skills: gamers could track small changes in the games’ structure more quickly than non-gamers, could more easily switch from one mission to the next, and were able to mentally rotate objects more efficiently. Our research will show that educational games can help motivate kids and increase interest in the subject they want to learn to improve retention and critical thinking.
INTRODUCTION:
Video games are often depicted in a negative light. Many adults say video games are bad because they either never played video games in their life, they played bad ones, or they did not like them. Parents who are critical of video games claim that video games are a bad influence on adolescents because they lead to mass shooting, fighting, violence, etc. However, video games can help adolescents in and out of school. Whitton (2011) started a project called ARGOSI which stands for Alternate Reality Games for Orientation, Socialization and Induction. In this project, researchers gave a group of students a series of puzzles and challenges to introduce college students to the university and to improve their literacy. The students entering the university participated in the study for a year and the researchers measured the participants’ academic performance throughout the school year. Video Game advocates like Leonard A. Annetta argue on behalf of video games in the classrooms because the teaching methods currently used are outdated (40 years) and society is changing—tech jobs are being outsourced, technology is rapidly changing and society, more specifically the net generation and future generations, will be negatively impacted if we continue to use old methods. Video games can help improve reading skills because students can interact with the game while at the same time reading and interacting closely with “model readers”. Because the advanced reader will be forced to work with unfamiliar vocabulary as well, the game becomes a place where both readers are working in unfamiliar territory, and the confidence of the reluctant reader may increase, ultimately resulting in two more advanced readers.
AIM:
The purpose of the topic is to show that video games can help adolescent students with their education by improving their memory and critical thinking skills.
METHOD:
This research is a literature review of the impact video games have on the education of adolescent students. The community chosen for this topic is the United States. Three peered reviewed journals were searched on the topic of the potential impact video games have on the memory, critical-thinking and reading skills in adolescent students using the databases JSTOR, EBSCOhost, and Interactive Learning Environments.