Games and simulations develop your entire neural network, rather than one small part of it. This is a different kind of learning than results from classroom teaching. Clark Aldrich sums it up precisely, and to my mind accurately, "the necessary goal of a well-designed sim-based program is to develop in the student a deep, flexible, intuitive, kinesthetic understanding of the subject matter." Content-learning is very one-dimensional. You learn a fact; that's it. But deeper, practice-based learning is multidimensional. In addition to any putative facts that you might learn, you gain an array of deeper skills and insights.
Aldrich writes, "To deliver this condensed experience, sims have to necessarily present richly interactive content models, interfaces and visualizations, and then entice or force students to repeat patterns of actions in increasingly complex and novel situations, and with rigorous short term and increasingly long term feedback. It is here that computer games, much more than classrooms or books, become the better framework to organize content and motivate students."
Aldrich writes, "To deliver this condensed experience, sims have to necessarily present richly interactive content models, interfaces and visualizations, and then entice or force students to repeat patterns of actions in increasingly complex and novel situations, and with rigorous short term and increasingly long term feedback. It is here that computer games, much more than classrooms or books, become the better framework to organize content and motivate students."
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