How Alternate Reality Games Will Change Education: EMMA RUNDLE charts the course for Movie Viral..
What is an ARG? As the name suggests, it uses the real world as a scene for action – in other words, it integrates the real world into the fabric of the game. A typical characteristic of such games is that they deny they are games at all. ARGs usually pretend that more is happening in this world than we know and that the players are among the select few that are aware of this. To tap into the news feed surrounding ARGs and to learn more about the diversity of games available, visit the ARG Network website – one of the most popular and comprehensive resources in this field.
How ARGs Can Prove Useful in Education
Games have been used for quite a while in a classroom setting since they provide a number of benefits in teaching. Nevertheless, it is getting harder to keep today’s youth engaged and part of the reason is that most games are overly simplistic or out fashioned compared to what students can access from their smartphones or computers. Additionally, it is hard to keep up with the stories, graphics, and the overall experience that game developing industries offer to young generations. ARGs could be a “game-changer” in this context and could even become one of the most important trends in education in the not-so-distant future. There are certain reasons to believe that.
ARGs Redefine Classroom Boundaries
The most important benefit of ARGs is that, unlike classical video games like the classroom flash game, these games don’t have to be confined to a screen. They also needn’t be confined to the classroom, neither geographically, nor temporally. Thus, the unparalleled diversity of real-world tools, platforms, and locations could be used to advance the story. This includes social media, mysterious websites, outdoor locations which are often found after decrypting geocaching data, mysterious websites or mail deliveries, phone calls, etc.
This aspect easily qualifies ARGs as fully immersive experiences that can contribute to a seamless and entertaining yet challenging learning process. By using the real world as a scene of action but also by means of the stories told, ARG games can blur the boundary between reality and fiction, which can lead to a high degree of player involvement.
ARGs Can Be Highly Addictive
Like quest games, ARGs revolve around puzzles and intellectual challenges. Properly designed puzzles can be incredibly addictive and can keep students involved for hours and days in a row. Given this, it is very easy to use ARGs for educational purposes, especially in STEM subjects, by building puzzles that revolve around discipline-related content.
ARGs Could Become the Synonym for Efficient Learning
The efficiency of learning or memorizing new information has a lot to do with the way we receive it and students are particularly likely to experience this in college, where a lot of individual learning happens and there is a flood of new material. ARGs, as innovative tools, could allow students to learn faster and more efficiently. However, traditional homework still competes seriously with these games, both in terms of time and mental resources dedicated. In this context, students should be aware that they can benefit from essay assistance services if they need to urgently get their homework sorted out or in case they regard certain tasks as an excessive waste of time.
ARGs Could Promote Group Work and Socialization
Another key reason is that ARGs revolve around a networked narrative, which is often advanced by the contribution of many individual members. Hence, such games are good tools to foster cooperation of individual students or even groups on various projects or tasks. Such games could even promote the inclusion of isolated students that have difficulties socializing. In fact, the social dimension should make the game more appealing and addictive for virtually everyone else.
Conclusion
To conclude, ARGs have a number of important benefits as listed above. In some way, they are akin to the application of knowledge in real life. At this point, finding a game that perfectly matches the desired discipline-related content could be challenging, but with time, this is likely to change given that these games seem to be the next stage in the evolution of education. It is easy to imagine a future in which content from most disciplines could be integrated into such super-games and students could pursue selectively the tasks or disciplines that interest them most, free of boundaries and restrictions.
Author’s Bio
Emma has been writing on various education-related topics for several online magazines. She has good knowledge of the industry of content writing and the diversity of niches it branches into. Her primary interest is predicting how these services would affect the educational process as we know it.
