University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, February 13, 1990
9
Psychology computer games 'complexify' thinking
By Carol B. Shiney
Kansan staff writer
Thursday nights, students form a line outside the door to a room in the computer center where their classmates concentrate on the computer screens in front of them.
They are waiting to play games for a grade.
"I can present ideas in games by embedding them in a set of rules that would be impossible to teach in a game." Shelly, professor of psychology.
Shelly has used computer-based instruction to teach his classes since the mid-1970s. Students in his PSYC 260 class, social psychology, play computer games for part of their grade instead of attending lectures.
of the games, students were supposed to learn how to respond to and deal with changing situations. She said the class still was confusing.
"Lecture is a relatively medieval way to teach, in general." Sheilly 1980.
"It's like you're being led through a maze blindfolded," she said.
Shelly said that in addition to the time dimension, there were three space dimensions: length, width and depth. Lectures are only a sequence of sound occupied by time. They do not occupy any significant space.
"Videos are more effective because they use three out of the four dimensions," he said.
Hardin said she thought that some students in the class would learn about social behavior by playing the
He explained that lectures were ineffective because they used only one of the space-time dimensions.
to complexify thinking." Shelly said.
Shelly designed and wrote the more than 100 games that he uses in all three of his courses, social psychology, psychology of satisfaction and advanced personality. He said the games varied in difficulty, with A games being the most complex and C games the easiest.
The games make students think on more complex levels because it is necessary to react and make choices in the game depending on the rules, which are the ideas of the course, he said. Decisions also must be made depending on what a student's opponent has just done.
"The whole goal of my teaching is
'it's different from most of my other classes. I'm used to studying from a book that has things related to the topic.'
How C. Han (left), Malaysia senior, and Roy Hammar, Wichita senior, predict behavior in a computer game.
Kathy Mar Garden City junior
Kathy Mar, Garden City junior who is enrolled in Shelly's class, said she had thought the class would be easier than it was.
"It's different from most of my other classes," she said. "I'm used to studying from a book that has things related to the topic."
Mar said one of the games, called naughty student, required the player to guess what row and chair the naughty student would leave crumbs on next.
"It it seems like a random guess of where this guy is going to land next." she said. "But if you keep up with the game, you kind of have a visual pattern of how far he has gone, and you can kind of guess where he's going to land next."
Julie Hardin, Evanston, Ill.,
senior, who is enrolled in the class,
said it was one of the most bizarre
classes she had taken.
games but that some students would miss the point.
"Nothing is written down," she said. "It's what you get out of it from playing the games."
She said that through the mastery
Students in the class take one essay exam that counts for 50 percent of their grades. The games count for the other 50 percent.
About 60 students are enrolled in Shelly's social psychology class. Students in the class can play games from 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday, but are not required to go every Thursday.
Shelly said the size of the class was set by the number of computers. The students use 12 IBM compatibles.
Shelly said he multiplied the two grades together then took the square root of that number. If a student got a low grade on either part, then the overall grade would be low.
said.
"This emphasizes doing well on both parts rather than doing well on one and letting it carry over," he
Shelly said the exam, which is given about one month into the semester, asked students to apply the concepts of the games to a real-life situation.
would not have time to play all of the games, they needed to read about them in the class handbook for the test. The handbook, which is about the games, is 500 to 700 pages long.
he said that because students
To get an A in the class, students must acquire more than 3,000 points
by playing the games. However, Shelly said students could write papers.
In discussing why he used computer games in his teaching, he said colleges had originated to teach nobility to sound intelligent.
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