Universities bring video games into the classroom

They might not root for a top-ranked football team or enjoy the nightlife of a big city like New York or Los Angeles, but students at Indiana's Wabash College are about to become the envy of underclassmen around the nation.

That's because alongside classics like Hamlet, Gilgamesh and the Tao Te Ching, they'll have to study smash 2007 video game Portal if they want to graduate.
Portal

Hit game Portal is on the curriculum.

The game will be included in the school's new "Enduring Questions" course, a required freshman seminar devoted to "engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives" in order to help them "confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world."

Portal's inclusion comes courtesy of teacher Michael Abbot, who also happens to run video game blog The Brainy Gamer. As part of a committee elected to help design the new course, Abbot proposed that students first read Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, then play through the first-person puzzle game (essays have been written linking the two.)

After convincing his peers to give it a whirl, Abbot "enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines."

"They got it," he said. "They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game. Most importantly, they saw how Portal could provoke thoughtful reflection and vigorous conversation on questions germane to the course."

Portal is just the latest game to make its way into a syllabus. The University of Florida is offering “21st Century Skills in Starcraft,” a course that uses the classic strategy game to help teach "skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, resource management, and adaptive decision making." Students will be required to watch matches, write papers and, of course, play the game.

"My problem solving skills in Starcraft are the same problem solving skills learned in school or the real world," class teacher and PhD candidate Nathaniel Poling told Technology Review. "In Starcraft you're managing a lot of different units and groups of different capacities. It's not a stretch to think of that in the business world or in the work of a healthcare administrator."

If that sounds familiar, it should. A different StarCraft course found footing at UC Berkeley several years ago, as did a 2009 Guitar Hero course at NYU.