073: Learning to Play

Solutions for Higher Education with Southern Utah University President Scott L Wyatt

Show Notes:

President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith are joined by Dustin Hansen, Sr. Creative Director at Electronic Arts, to discuss game design and game theory and how video games relate to learning opportunities and educational growth.

Featured Quotes:

. . . if I’m being really honest, my approach to education kind of follows my approach to game theory which is you have to let people experiment. You have to let somebody fail, and I was in a teaching, an art teaching position, one of the hardest things for any artist and I’m sure Steve will fit with this too because it crosses over to music very well, is artists are told to find their voice. What’s the unique thing that you can do to find your voice? And it just absolutely stifles people. It stops them in their tracks. So, my theory to that is the only way to find your voice is to fail at trying to be somebody else.
Dustin Hansen, Electronic Arts

So, when we’re asking people to really pause and understand language and we can’t truly speak their language—and I’m speaking as a game designer, not as an educator but I think there are some similarities there—when we’re asking them to speak in a language that we have defined, as a game designer, there’s a high, high correlation with failure there. But when you allow them to speak in their own experiences, that failure and that learning goes up dramatically.
Dustin Hansen, Electronic Arts

Links Associated with this Episode:

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