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Sure... compare with reading a book, or doing an experiment. It takes contextualization and reflection, which can be done by a learner (autodictat) or school (pedagogy).

It's also a higher level of learning that's difficult to quantify. Student A and B take History 101. Student A is given a book on US History after 1870. Gets test on same topic. If he read the book, does pretty well. Student B plays a history game, explains outcome, and compares with actual historical events. Certainly more impressive, but if given the standard 101 exam, would he do better? I think games are likely to get the short end of the stick with most standardized assessments.

I don't know -- it has much to do with the way the prof articulates her objectives. For us (who use games regularly), we can/will shape our objectives at least somewhat around existing titles (just as others do so around existing texts), or augment those games with other content that they don't cover (as others do with inadequate texts). So it seems the issue is more about trying to articulate why games could be useful to *others*, who don't yet use them. Trying to persuade our colleagues to try games when they've been using texts with which they're familiar to accomplish pedagogical objectives they've been using for years is going to be hard, and that's where identifying games that more directly support traditional objectives becomes a boon.

I wonder if we could develop a few talking points tying games to Bloom's taxonomy (updated version), making clear that like all pedagogical tools, games address some student needs better than others. And, of course, that not all games address the same type of developmental tasks, just as all texts, A/V materials, classroom techniques do not address the same tasks. The computer/radio analogy is a good one. Expecting computers and/or games to replace some other educational and entertainment resource is missing the point - they are their own thing.

Ed, I feel like such a set of points might already exist and/or have been publicly expressed by game critics/designers, especially from the serious games side of things. But that shouldn't stop us from discussing whether they might be in need of update/reworking/extension. :) I'm interested -- could/should we try to look at some existing texts/posts and then come together in a conference call or something?

I'm thinking something specific to liberal arts educators. We could brainstorm with an etherpad clone (e.g. ietherpad.com) or asynchronously via a google doc.

Ed, would you object if I took that Bloom's approach in a forthcoming paper? "augment those games with other content that they don't cover (as others do with inadequate texts)" - nicely said, Brett.

They're certainly two perspectives on pedagogy I myself encounter regularly, though for me it's digital media production instead. Still, I wonder if games is entering the academy at an interesting time in terms of opening up conceptions of learning and pedagogy. A decade or two ago, and we might have seen less interdisciplinary language in the way these folks are talking about games as an object of study.

Interesting historical perspective, Brett. How is gaming's incorporation different from digital media's, a decade ago?

I was really thinking about TV -- guess it's more decades ago than I'd thought -- and the way TV became the younger sibling to film. Of course there are more formal similarities between them than between either and games in many ways, so maybe the comparison is not particularly apt.