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Super Mario Brothers Candy by sonson

Here’s a quick post on an imperfect start to using video games in the classroom for teaching the soft-skills necessary for collaboration in a manner (hopefully) authentic and relevant to students’ media experience.

• Teams of 3-4 students played New Super Mario Bros. Wii at a classroom station.
• Teams were asked to win the most levels possible with the fewest lives lost in 20 minutes.
• A teacher kept track of lives lost and levels won on a graphic organizer and took notes, as well, about groups’ pro- and anti-social behavior.
• Lives could also be lost on paper for trash-talking.
• Trash-talking was addressed whenever it occurred, and serial trash-talkers were asked to stop playing.
• The group with the lowest lives lost to levels won ratio was awarded 3 lunch periods on the Wii.

Here are our results (lives lost:levels beat, reduced to the lowest equivalent ratio):

• Group 1 – 10:1
• Group 2 – 6:1
• Group 3 – 50:1
• Group 4 – 22: 1
• Group 5 – 15:1
• Group 6 – 10:1

Here are comments from the groups with the lowest and highest ratios, respectively:

• Comments from Group 2: “Backed up to easier levels; good teamwork and talk; [Student A] led them through the levels and made sure all followed.”
• Comments from Group 3: “Students fought each other and never started working together.”

I can see that Group 3 needs some social stories work before playing together again, and that the difference between Groups 2 and 3 wasn’t necessarily the amount of communication, but the type of communication that went on between group members.  Before the next contest, I’ll use the data and observations from this activity to pose questions for students about the value of strategic thinking, positive communication, and leadership to social learning.  To help make the discussion more personally meaningful to students, I might begin by asking students to figure out the ratios and results from the data after I make it anonymous.

What do you think?  Does the competition undercut the collaboration?  Is the reward appropriate? I’ll follow up later so we can see where the activity goes and whether or not it impacts soft-skills and collaboration in the classroom.