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Video games have long since ceased to be a niche pastime and have become fully integrated into popular culture. Nowadays, its great potential in education is argued. In previous articles, we talked about connected learning as a resource to keep students interested in learning. Connective learning consists of being aware of the network of connections that constitute a student’s interests and knowing how to bring that to what is learned in the classroom.
Video games are an interest shared by many students around the world. In Mexico, 55.8 million people play video games assiduously; in the United States, there are 211 million players, and India registered 198 million players in the mobile sector alone during 2015, with the potential to increase to 628 million this year.
People who play video games as a pastime spend an average of seven hours and seven minutes a week playing. However, the ones playing the most, some 19.6% of video game players, do so for 12 hours a week. But how can we take advantage of this pastime shared by so many people to convert it into a resource for education?
eSports and learning communities
Since the emergence of eSports, video games have become not only a means of capturing sporting talent for universities but also a catalyst to create communities where students can live and learn, parallel to what they are taught in school. According to the North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF), video games do not have to be a solitary activity. When they are integrated into extra-curricular programs, they create a platform to acquire skills like assertive communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
The social benefits of playing video games in an educational environment are significant and accompany students into their adult lives. Through the games, barriers among groups of people with different points of view and cultural heritages can be broken down, healthy relationships can be facilitated among students, and the students can build up their self-esteem by overcoming challenges.
Video games and cognitive adaptability
Competitive video games do not just serve as an entertainment challenge or relief from stress. According to Dr. Adam Gazzeley, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, there is a direct relationship between the mastery of competitive video games and cognitive adaptability. The key to expanding the brain’s ability to adapt and acquire new knowledge is plasticity, he asserts. Dr. Gazzeley, who also designs games to combat memory loss related to aging, demonstrated in 2016 that video games help improve the multitasking capacity of seniors to a point comparable to that of people in their 20s.
Similarly, Dr. Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Geneva, used competitive action video games to measure and boost the level of attention to detail in students. Bavelier and her team found that the perception level of students could increase from just a little bit to a high level of cognitive flexibility. According to her findings, 5 to 15 hours a week of play promoted better vision and the ability to perceive details in a disorganized environment.
The video game hobby contains elements that are useful to assist the development of social, motor, technical, visual, and emotional skills, as well as critical and logical thinking. Educators must establish an open dialogue with students and know firsthand how they are influenced by their interactions with video games, their experience playing and competing, and the consequent coexistence with people who share their same interests.
If you have integrated video games into extra-curricular activities in your school, what benefits or learnings have you seen in the students practicing them within an educational context? Tell us in the comments section below.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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