Critical Analysis of The Article Gamifying The Classroom is a Bad Idea by Michael Thomsen

On March 29, 2014, Michael Thomsen published an article entitled "Gamifying the classroom is a bad idea" which talks about how educational video games are more harmful than they are helpful. The article discussed the issue of video games' simplification of students' cognitive performance because students' answers are limited to true or false values in a computer. Furthermore, Thomsen talks about how educational video games are ideal tools for standardized testing and how video games take children's attention during class. The author, although inaccurate about how educational video games can be companions for standardized testing, is correct in pointing out the obsession of children toward them which affects their academic performance. Standardized testing, Thomsen feels, will be the future of educational video games because of the different performance metrics rooted from choices the player makes in the game. Games today are advancing. With more player choices such as free-roam in open world games, players are given more possibilities to explore throughout the game. This paves the way for more qualitative result analysis at the end of video games instead of quantitative comparison based on a baseline of players. Of course, it is nearly impossible for a computer to analyze results qualitatively, like how meaningful relationships or alliances the player made with the NPC's (Non-player characters) were, but teachers can edit personalized parameters that fit a particular student more.

Video games specialized for certain students can apply to students in different levels of thinking. For example, abstract thinkers and analytical thinkers are categorized easily through testing and this information can be used to change video games according to a student's level of thinking to enhance their abilities in thinking. Qualitative result includes resource efficiency in particularized situations, abstract problem-solving, and puzzles that test students' deduction and connection-making abilities. According to Glennon (2018), in his article entitled "Detroit: Become Human' is a Gorgeous, Thought-Provoking Sci-Fi Treat With Oodles of Possibilities", the adventure game Detroit: Become Human is included with a "decision tree" that in every decision that the player makes, the tree roots out, because the player didn't make the other decisions. In this situation the decision tree being discussed dictated the possibilities of games and proper ordering if data. In this game, there are different possibilities that branch out in a tree-like fashion that applies to action, dialogue, and the players play-style, creating space for teachers or developers to create a game platform that fits a student or a student category. This means that performance is almost unlikely to be compared to a baseline score because the point system accounts for too many factors decided by the player.

Despite the lack of accuracy of the first main idea, Thomsen mentioned about how the anticipation of playing the educational video games take children's attention in class. Although children aren't known to be the most focused workers, games do distract the child from studying during classes because of their excitement to play. In an article by CBC News (2010), entitled "Video games threaten kids' attention span", a study was done observing that children who exceed two hours of screen time daily were one and a half to two times more likely to be described by teachers as distracted or prone to attention problems. The study suggested that the students weren't listening in class because of the video games, which was also discussed in the article of Thomsen. Thomsen talked about a teacher who witnessed children giving their attention to the anticipation of playing video games in the classroom, this proves one of the article's main ideas that video games can be harmful to children's academics.

Educational video games today can measure results from a wide range of selections that test their abstract thinking abilities, which is difficult to integrate to standardized testing methods where the results are compared to a baseline, but children are often distracted because they are excited to play video games in the classroom, taking away their attention in other classes. Although video games provide an alternative to standardized testing, students are found to be distracted in class because they are excited to play them.