“Using Video Games as Educational Tools to Help High School Students
Write Better Essays”
Introduction
Most high school students dread essay writing homework. Writing
assignments often include reading thick books that authors have filled
with blocks of text. They will need to do research and reading the
blocks of texts can feel exhausting to most students. On the contrary,
video games tend to hold a person’s attention longer than any other
medium. Despite the debate over the advantages and disadvantages of
video games, there have been games that people developed to teach
nursing and business students practical skills. There also have been
some games that are made using real-life history that teachers can
use to teach a class. However, there is a lack of research regarding the
correlation between video games and writing abilities. This study will
help in understanding the capacity of games to inform students and
how they can help in essay writing. The study will help educators
create an effective lesson plan in using video games as educational
tools to help high school students write better essays.
Background Research
There have been studies that promote video games as effective
educational tools for all education levels. However, there are still many
aspects of video games and education that researchers have yet to
analyze. The research of Utoyo, Arsa on video games as tools for
education concludes that using video games provides an opportunity
to improve education due to realistic simulations that only the
medium can offer. (Widitiarsa, 2018). The researcher stated that the
next step is to design educational video games to create the standards
for effective educational games. However, this study does not mention
video games as good teaching tools for writing essays or any type of
written works.
There have also been reports of educators using video games to teach
writing to students. Students were able to write game reviews,
autobiographical pieces, and other writing works. The teacher used
character images, famous video game quotes, and great writing lines
to inspire students to think of essay topics (Jones, 2018). The
students that are interested in games were able to freely discuss
topics and ideas. They use articles from game journalists to back up
their claims during open discussions. This report shows that some
educators are already recognizing the ability of video games to act as a
teaching tool for writing essays and other written works.
Objectives
The researchers aim to achieve their objective of using video games as
educational tools to help high school students write better essays by
answering the following specific objectives:
To analyze the influence of critical thinking in using video games
as educational tools to help high school students write better
essays.
To assess the influence of student’s writing skills in using video
games as educational tools to help high school students write
better essays.
To assess the influence of video game genres in using video games
as educational tools to help high school students write better
essays.
Aim and Need for the Study
Most high school students often have difficulty with writing
assignments. They dread the process of researching and writing down
notes. Most students will carry this behavior up until college which
can result in having difficulty writing their research papers and
dissertation. Some teachers have already addressed this issue by
using video game topics to help spark student interests. However, the
researchers believe that targeted research is necessary to create an
effective lesson plan in using video games as educational tools to help
high school students write better essays.
The researchers aim to analyze the influence of critical thinking in
using video games as educational tools to help high school students
write better essays. The study will test how video games help in the
development of critical thinking skills and how they can transfer to
better essay writing. This will help educators understand how video
games affect a student’s brain and thinking skills. The study also
aims to assess the influence of student’s writing skills in using video
games as educational tools to help high school students write better
essays. The study will take into account the existing writing skills of
high school students and observe how video games can help improve
the existing skills. This will provide teachers and researchers
quantitative data on the extent of how video games can act as writing
education tools. Lastly, the study aims to assess the influence of video
game genres in using video games as educational tools to help high
school students write better essays. The researchers will use different
games from different genres to assess how the different genres affect
high school student’s writing skills. This will help to understand what
type of games teachers should use to help students write better
essays.
Research Methodology
The researchers will use three different video games from the following
genres: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from the Role-playing genre, The
Sims 4 from the Simulation genre, and Firewatch from the Adventure
genre to assess using video games as educational tools to help high
school students write better essays.
The researchers will conduct the study on 400 WXY high school
students out of a population of 600 high school students. The
researchers will take note of the students’ most recent English subject
grades. This is to gather data on how existing writing skills can affect
using video games as educational tools to help high schools student
write better essays. The researchers will divide the students into three
groups corresponding to the three video game genres state above. The
students will play the games for an hour for a three-week period. After
each week, the students will take critical thinking exams that will
measure their critical thinking skills.
The researcher will collect primary data from the activities and
secondary data from related literature. The researcher will analyze the
quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics. The
quantitative data will be from the assessment of how the different
genres influence video games as tools to help high school students
write better essays. The researchers will triangulate the qualitative
data and report comparisons between the gathered data and existing
data.
References
Jones, Sarah. (2018, April 2018). Teaching Writing Through Video
Games, Part I. Moving
Writers. [Link]
through-video-games-part-i/
Widitiarsa, Arsa (2018). Video Games as Tools for
Education. [Link]