Can you play your way to better intercultural understanding? Game-based learning is becoming more and more accepted. There is even a new high school in New York where the curriculum is based on games. I have previously explored some games for promoting intercultural competence such as the University of Portsmouth’s C-shock but this time I devoted a whole podcast to the issue of whether games can help your intercltural understanding.
Here in Denmark we have Serious Games Interactive which is aimed more at social studies or contemporary history students but their exploraion of well known issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, child soldiers and child labour puts you, the game player, at the heart of the situation so that you have to make some personal, individual decisions which are then played out in the game. This personalisation makes some of these games very suitable for learning more about cultural differences. In the case of child labour for example, Westerners condemn the practice unequivocally but when you are standing in front of a girl who is the sole breadwinner for her family, are you going to tell her she should go to school instead? I had a very interesting chat with Mikkel Lucas Overby from Serious Games Interactive about where the idea for the games came from and how they have been received by students. One thing I found interesting was that students had to be told that the SRI games are to be compared to theri ordinary lessons and not to the games they play in their free time.
It was even more interesting to hear that one of SRI’s new series of historical games about the American slave trade is too contentious to be accepted in American schools even though the topic forms part of the curriculum. So it seems that there are still areas where games are unacceptable learning vehicles. However military interaction with Afghanis is also a serious matter and yet there is now a short game simulating contact between a small group of American soldiers and an Afghani which teaches some valuable lessons about how to tackle the need to gain the confidence of key individuals in Afghanistan. Connect with Haji Kamal can be played in about 10 minutes but things can easily go awry if you say the wrong thing. The makers suggest this game would be a good prelude to a face to face session on intercultural communication and I agree.
There are also intercultural games to be played in Second Life at SIETAR’s virtual centre. The Society for Intercultural Education and Research has devised a series of quizzes about different cultures which you can take when you visit their building. Culture specific rather than culture general. To get more authentic intercultural games you would probably need to devise specific events with real people to be played out in the Second Life environment.
In the end I think that games are never going to replace other means of learning about intercultural communication but well designed game-based experiences can certainly go a long way to raising awareness and prompting you to ask pertinent questions.