World of Education
Talking to Mike recently about the addictive factors in modern computer games, it became clear that they same tricks can be applied in every day lives. The typical tricks are a social environment to promote status/achievement comparisons, providing rewards (virtual and sometimes purely aesthetic — this can be a status indicator to others in the virtual world, but typically useful in some way in the game world), setting up achievement treadmills — rewarding repetition of sometimes arbitrary tasks — of exponentially growing difficulty, reducing the correlation between effort and instantaneous reward (proven to increase dopamine vs predictable results), and some amounts of complexity/richness to the world.
These games are so popular and addictive because they serve as an escape from our multi-dimensional realities. In the real world we do not have clear paths to success, instantaneous reinforcement and rewards, or clear lines drawn between cause and effect.
I will use the specific example of our education system. Most children, except for the truly intellectually curious, find school a chore and a necessary evil. The system could drastically improve if students wanted to learn as much as they wanted a suit of armor in World of Warcraft, and put in the requisite effort. A push vs pull inversion would require a complete re-imagining of the system. There are some educational games out there but they lack many (or all) of the components above which trigger our dopamine receptors and motivate our desires. Here are some simple ideas for how to manipulate the minds of students into learning, the same way they are manipulated into wanting to collect virtual gold coins to buy a virtual pair of pants:
social aspect: A system to publicly and regularly compare the progress (intertemporal) and raw (as well as relative) achievement levels of each student vs their class, school, etc. A standard metric system would need to be developed but this would grow out of the challenges/rewards set up throughout the system
reward system: Some rewards can be purely aesthetic, such as official titles signifying various levels of achievement in different academic subjects. Others would be actively useful in the system, such as extra time on an exam.
achievement treadmills: Whether we like it or not, a strong fundamental education is built off of repetition in order to deeply ingrain basic concepts such as multiplication, grammar, the law of gravity, etc. into our minds. This is perfect for a hedonic treadmill; we just need a system which marks levels of achievement from repeatedly solving problems of varying difficulty over and over with slight differences each time. Once a student has mastered a concept, they get to unlock a more complex concept and restart the cycle of learning, mastering, proceeding, etc. The key to making this enjoyable vs. a chore is the ability to go at your own pace (the more effort you put in, the faster you advance) and to compare your progress to your peers to foster competition.
The same tricks can be used in many facets of our lives, even after entering the “real world”. It just becomes up to us to setup the correct treadmills and reward systems to experience the hedonic effects necessary to stimulate the self-reinforcing “addiction effort-reward” cycle
Very interesting; however much of this appears to me to already play out in the educational system.
The series of proposals you have laid out would seem to find their best application with average/below average students. The rationale behind this involves evidence (at least from my observations) that above average students already find the competitive nature of the real world to be of sufficient motivation.
Advanced students regularly compete with each other from their earliest years in the educational system. Grades (“who got the highest score?”), achievements (“how many books did you read this month?”, “gold stars”), and the like keep kids on the competitive treadmill you speak of, and keep many of them going well into college. For these students, the system works insofar as the barriers inherent in the system (typically defined as “lesser-performing students”) can be overcome by the advanced students’ tenacity and competitive drive.
I feel your suggestions would have the best effect on average students. It might be possible to pull many of these average students from the grasp of mediocrity by offering new and innovative ways of encouraging performance. As you’ve suggested, these could include inducements, rewards, titles, etc.
Unfortunately, I tend to believe that the lowest performing students are often beyond help. It’s important to note that by “lower performing students”, I do not mean to include intelligent students who have not yet been motivated. I mean to imply students for whom little hope exists outside of rote “education” in basic skills. Some of these students might exhibit the competitive drive, but those exhibitions might manifest themselves outside of the academic arena (sports, arts, etc.) For these students, an altogether different educational track might be the best alternative.
All in all, good food for thought here.
The foundation of your three suggestions has existed within public and private education in the US for decades–however arguably ineffective.
The social aspect is covered by standardized tests in which both students and schools receive scores that are relational to their peers (i.e. 99th percentile, blue ribbon schools)
I’m sure you’ve won at least one medal of ‘academic’ honor during your youth. The structure of rewards from K – 12 closely mirrors that of video games already. The younger children have easier tasks, with more rewards being given to a wider population of students–the “everyone is a winner” attitude conditions kids to like receiving shiny things. As we get older the awards become increasingly scarce and we must compete harder. By high school, the rewards now equate to real world dollars in the form of scholarships. This is surely a prime example of what you suggest.
The conditions which breed this addiction of “effort-reward” must have a foundation somewhere else. I believe that is in the social scape, or “clan.” Just as a World of Warcraft Guild reinforces each member to achieve higher ‘powers’ and ‘levels’, a child whose peers or family do not recognize those rewards as validation of “fitting in” will not desire even the lowest accolade of achievement.