Month: February 2021

Esports in education

Some 20 years ago I started a gaming club in the college I worked in using a couple of games consoles.  It quickly grew and changed from a leisure activity to something a little more competitive with matches set up to find the best gamer.   Fast forward 20 years and esports is now a significant business but in my opinion it hasn’t yet developed the foothold in schools and colleges that it deserves.

I suspect a big part of this is that many in schools still look at esports as “gaming”, as a leisure activity involving simply playing computer games and having fun.    I don’t think this does esports justice as it doesn’t take into consideration some of the key skills which esports has the potential to develop in students.

Strategy

Most of the esports games involve students working in teams and therefore, like in conventional sports like football, there is a need for strategy.   Will the team go all out attack, or sit back in defence?   How will each player help the team to succeed?     The development of match strategy and also the refining and adjustment of this strategy in game is key to a successful esports team.

Communication

Linked to the above is the importance of communication.   Esports competitions can be rather frenetic with a need for team members to share situational and strategic information efficiently at speed.   A team which effectively communicates both prior to and during matches is much more likely to succeed.

Teamwork

As a team sport the importance of team work is key in esports.   An effective team is likely to be more successful than the sum of its individual players.    Each player needs to be able to work with the others in the team, appreciating their needs and their situation within the game before working towards the success of the team as a whole.

Competition and Sportsmanship

Again, as in traditional sports, esports competitions allow students to develop the skills needed to manage challenges and difficulties as presented by a competitive environment.    They can help students develop resilience plus the all important sportsmanship skills in dealing graciously with both victory but also defeat.

For me esports is an important addition to schools or colleges activity programme and even to their academic provision through the likes of the recently launched esports BTec qualifications.  

One closing note though, I do continue to see esports competitions and involvement being dominated by male students;   It would be nice if we could encourage more girls to get involved.

Is online teaching as good as IRL?

I have read a lot about how online teaching isn’t as good as classroom teaching.   I myself agree that this is the case however I have come to realise that I have fallen into the generalisation trap.    I have bought into a simple argument that online teaching is either better or worse than real life, classroom, teaching, that there is a binary judgement to be made and that the world, in this case, is simple.    The world however isn’t simple and is seldom binary.     The line should read that online teaching isn’t generally as good as in real life teaching.

So, what brought me to this realisation?

I have seen some students absolutely excel in remote lessons, and not students who were previously excelling, but students who were struggling.    I am not sure if it is the added independence they have found online teaching has provided, the lack of peer pressure or something else, but they have excelled in terms of work rate, engagement and work quality.    Clearly for these students online teaching works better than teaching in a classroom.    These are the students who prove the assertion as fact, that “online teaching isn’t as good as real-life teaching” to be false.

Here for me lies the challenge as we move forward; How can we take these successes and translate them to the world of education as it will exist once we return to a semblance of normal, post pandemic?   How do we make sure that the students who have gained from online teaching, who find online teaching suits their needs, don’t lose out when we return to the bricks and mortar classroom?

Social Media: Just the messenger?

Social media both shares the goings and news of the world, but it also shapes and creates it.   This has become all the more apparent to me, but it worries me how we often we may not be concious of this.

Social media messages are short and simple.

The social media world relies on simple messages, on a single image, 280 character or a 60 second video.  The message needs to be simple as it is designed to be addictive and get our attention, to fit into busy lives and to encourage us to flick from one message to the next, then the next.   I know I have found myself wasting 20mins just flicking through amusing TikTok videos for example.   This is what the platform providers want us to do.  They want to keep us on their platform as this is how they achieve their revenue, via advertising, so the longer we are on their platform the more data they can mine and the more advertising revenue they can achieve.

The world is simple?

My concern is that the features of the medium, in this case social media, influence the messages which are being conveyed.  But what does this mean for how we perceive the challenges of the world, as shared via social media?    I would suggest this is encouraging us to increasingly see the world complex problems and challenges, as being simple.    Almost every problem whether it be global warming, the covid19 pandemic or racism can be boiled down into a social media message.   And for everyone message sent someone will be able to argue a counter position using the same medium and the same inherently short bite sized social media message.  As such I think we may become less aware of the nuanced nature of the problems we are faced with.   Seeing every problem being boiled down to a simple message may convince us that the problems themselves are simpler than, in the real world, they are.

Increasing binary viewpoints

This simplicity also makes it easier to see problems in terms of black and white or binary positions.   It makes it easy to see a statement on social media as either true or false rather than seeing the complexity and therefore the infinite number of possibilities which may exist between two extreme positions.   And again, for every post stating one position there is at least one person, and often many, many, people, able to reply with an opposing binary view.   This in turn could help to explain the increasing divisions in society whether this be in relation to Brexit in the UK or Trumps presidency in the US, or a multitude of other news stories.

Reinforcement learning

Social media also makes us hyperconnected.   Having identified data about our usage patterns, social media platforms will purposefully expose us to content which fits with these patterns.    As a result, we will be repeatedly exposed to consistent messaging which, through reinforcement, may strengthen our commitment to the binary viewpoints we are encouraged to develop.   This may make our commitment to our position, in relation to specific issues, and to defending such positions more fixed and immovable.     It can also impact on our world view including what we see as truth, how positively or how divided we see the world we live in.  

Social: Time to consider the medium and the message

Social media is here to stay.   It may not be Facebook, Twitter or TikTok in the future, but social media is highly likely to continue in some shape or form.   Watching the news reporting as to concerns in relation to social media, they tend to focus on the messages being shared.  They focus on what social media companies should be doing to prevent extremism, suicide, etc.   I agree work needs to be done here however I also think we also need to look at the vehicle for these messages and what this may mean for the society we live in.

Final Thoughts

Social media represents a magnified version of real life due to the nature of the medium.   This has its advantages in making it easy to consume and contribute to.   The flipside however is it lacks the detail, the nuanced nature and complexity of real life.   We need to be more concious of this, and to ensure our students are also concious of this. Only through being concious of the impact on the medium can we seek to adjust for and minimise it.