In his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee derives a set of learning principles from his study of the complex, self-directed learning each game player undertakes as s/he encounters and masters a new game. He suggests that adherence to these principles could transform learning in schools, colleges and universities, both for teachers and faculty and, most importantly, for students.
1) Active, Critical Learning Principle
All aspects of the the learning environment (including ways in which the semiotic
domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical,
not passive, learning
2) Design Principle
Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core
to the leaning experience
3) Semiotic Principle
Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple
sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex
system is core to the learning experience
4) Semiotic Domains Principle
Leaning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able
to participate, at some level, in the affinity group or groups connected to
them.
5) Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain Principle
Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the
semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains
6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle
Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered
7) Committed Learning Principle
Learners participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and practice)
as an extension of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity
to which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find compelling
8) Identity Principle
Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that
the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample
opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones.
There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on,
their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity
9) Self-Knowledge Principle
The virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only
about the domain but also about themselves and their current and potential capacities
10) Amplification of Input Principle
For a little input, learners get a lot of output
11) Achievement Principle
For learners of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning,
customized to each learner's level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling
the learner's ongoing achievements
12) Practice Principle
Learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where the practice is not
boring (i.e. in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own
terms and where the learners experience ongoing success). They spend lots of
time on task.
13. Ongoing Learning Principle
The distinction between the learner and the master is vague, since learners,
thanks to the operation of the "regime of competency" principle listed next,
must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to
new or changed conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization,
undoing automatization, and new re-organized automatization
14) "Regime of Competence" Principle
The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge
of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging
but not "Undoable"
15) Probing Principle
Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and
on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world
to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis
16) Multiple Routes Principle
There are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners
to make choices, rely on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem-solving,
while also exploring alternative styles
17) Situated Meaning Principle
The meanings of signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols, texts, etc.)
are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or decontextualized.
Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up cia embodied
experience
18) Text Principle
Texts are not understood purely verbally (i.e. only in terms of the definitions
of the words in the text and their text-internal relationships to each other)
but are understood in terms of embodied experience. Learners move back and forth
between texts and embodied experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading
texts apart from embodied action) comes only when learners have enough embodied
experience in the domain and ample experiences with similar texts
19) Intertextual Principle
The learner understands texts as a family ("genre") of related texts
and understands any one text in relation to others in the family, but only after
having achieved embodied understandings of some texts. Understanding a group
of texts as a family ("genre") of texts is a large part of what helps
the learner to make sense of texts
20) Multimodal Principle
Meaning and knowledge ate built up through various modalities (images, texts,
symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words
21) "Material Intelligence" Principle
Thinking, problem-solving and knowledge are "stored" in material objects
and the environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things
while combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored
in material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects
22) Intuitive Knowledge Principle
Intuitive or tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often
in association with an affinity group, counts a good deal and is honored. Not
just verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded
23) Subset Principle
Learning even at its start takes place in a (simplified) subset of the real
domain
24) Incremental Principle
Learning situations are ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead
to generalizations that are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more
complex cases later, the learning space (the number and type of guess the learner
can make) is constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations
the learned has founded earlier
25) Concentrated Sample Principle
The learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of the fundamental
signs and actions than should be the case in a less controlled sample. fundamental
signs and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get
to practice them often and learn them well
26) Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle
Basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts
as a basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the
game/domain or games/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a given
type of game/domain
27) Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle
The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-in-time, when
the learner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be
understood and used in practice
28) Discovery Principle
Overt telling is kept to a well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunities
for the learner to experiment and make discoveries
29) Transfer Principle
Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring
what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require
adapting and transforming that earlier learning
30) Cultural Models about the World Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and
reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without
denigration of their identities, abilities or social affiliations, and juxtapose
them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate to them in various
ways
31) Cultural Models about Learning Principle
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and
reflectively about their cultural models about learning and themselves as learners,
without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations,
and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as learners
32) Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains Principle
about their cultural models about a particular semiotic domain they are learning,
without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations,
and juxtapose them to new models about this domain
33) Distributed Principle
Meaning/knowledge is distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols,
technologies, and the environment
34) Dispersed Principle
Meaning/knowledge is dispersed in the sense that the learner shares it with
others outside the domain/game, some of whom the learner may rarely or never
see face-to-face
35) Affinity Group Principle
Learners constitute an "affinity group," that is, a group that is
bonded primarily through shared en devours, goals, and practices and not shared
race, gender, nation, ethnicity, or culture
36) Insider Principle
The learner is an "insider," "teacher," and "producer"
(not just a consumer) able to customize the learning experience and the domain/game
from the beginning and throughout the experience.
*Drawn from Gee, James Paul, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2003