Edutainment & Convergence Is Learner-Centered

By Chris A. Heidelberg, III, PhD

For the past five years I have been researching, writing about and speaking about edutainment and convergence. Somewhere around 2005, I began to find that edutainment and convergence is all about creating a learner-centered environment (Heidelberg, 2007, 2008; McCombs, 2003, 2005). I may sound like my colleagues Dr. Bill Spady (2001), Dr. Barbara McCombs (2003, 2005) and Dr. Reid Cornwell (2008) but they are absolutely correct in their assessments that the currrent educational system from K-20 is n ot learner-centered. 

As a point of fact, I would suggest that the current education is primarily based on a top-down model that has been a teacher-centered model and is gradually becoming a political, corporate and administrative model. McCombs (2003, 2005) made the case to me for the learner-centered environment during my dissertation research when I read her books. However, it was when I met Dr. McCombs that her message resonated with total clarity. Dr. McCombs has spent an academic lifetime in the field demonstrating the effectiveness of her theories in some of the most challenging urban academic environments.  One would think that the learner centered principles advocated by her and others (Stark & Lattuca, 1997) would have been adopted by most of the great teaching institutions of higher education. However, the Academy is still wedded to 13th and 14th century traditions while young people are entering adult life and the digital economy ill-equipped in too many cases to compete against our competitors despite having the best system and resources. This is a form of educational malpractice. When administrators and faculty have access to the tools that make education relevant and create a relationship with the knowledge so that the built in rigor can occur in a learner-centered environment, and there is no fundamental change in the learning environment en masse this is a form of negligence known as educational malpractice. However, this nation has been fallen under the seductive spell of high stakes standardized tests as assessment tools (Spady, 2001). The four obvious culprits are the corporate testing companies, pandering politicians who should know better, the educational community that should have objected to high stakes testing and began teaching the test to survive, and the American public. The one group that has not been called to task is the corporate media that has simply parroted industry and political spin with little public resistance. As a media professional, a researcher and an educator, I feel ashamed about what has happened; however, I am optimistic about the future for learning because of my research on edutainment and convergence.

  Personally, I would take the military option! What I mean by the military option is that I would utilize tools such as video games as one of my assessment tools of choice. Why utilize video games? Video games have been effectively utilized for more than thirty years by the military for defense purposes and space exploration (Halter, 2006; Wisher, 2000). Video games  are a form of simulation that is blurring the line between reality and fantasy because of tools like Nintendo's Wii and its Wii Fit program which may provide health and fitness benefits for millions and is being used by medical professionals for rehabilitation purposes.
Why does the military utilize gaming? Because they are relevant to young people and they work! Video games are relevant to young people because the y are interactive, exploratory, competitive and fun. Young people are digital natives with a natural affinity for all things digital (Gee, 2004, 2005; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Video games create relationships between the players, the game and the knowledge embedded in the game (Gee, 2004, 2005, 2007; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Finally, video games are full of the rigor that increases as the learner advances through the game, and video games can be played online and updated for the gifted students (Gee, 2001, 2006; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Video games of every stripe have the ability to digitally access students (Wisher, 2000).
There are other convergence tools with edutainment capabilities that can also be utilized by learners. For example, i iTunesU is now being used by Ivy League, flagship institutions, honors colleges and other institutions of higher learning. What makes iTunesU effective for students is that it is asynchronous and it enables students to download automatically or on demand once the instructor loads the podcast recording of the class  to iTunes. This enables any student with a computer, laptop, iPod or cell phone to download the course and even burn copies of the lecture with a personal computer. This is learner-centered activity in the world of edutainment and convergence is the Twenty-first century learning and economic environment. So the question becomes this: will learning become student centered or become a political and industry centered tool that fails to teach critical thinking that may sometimes run counter to status quo. In the final analysis, education and learners will have their liberty through learner-centered principles and edutainment and convergence, or education and learners will gradually experience a death due to learning through the status quo.  Remember, the learner is the reason  for education and edutainment makes it fun! Learning should be fun and challenging too!