Applying Rome II Total War in Education: Your thoughts on using games for or in learning 1

Applying Rome II: Total War in Education: Your thoughts on using games for or in learning

John Wilgress

22141789

The University of Western Australia

EDUC 5464 Information and Communication Technology Curriculum I

Mrs. Louise Moroney

16/05/2017
Applying Rome II Total War in Education 2

Teachers are asked by both the AITSL Standards 2.1 and SCSAs curriculum aims to
engage their students in their specific learning area (AITSL, 2017; SCSA, 2017). What better
way to engage students than by "gamifying" their learning experience. Various theorist, such as
Piaget (1962), Turkle (1995) and Vygotsky (1978) have proposed the benefits of games which
allow students to experience, to try, to improve skills, to learn content and to practice strategy
(Burgos, Tatersall & Koper, 2006) The gamification of learning is a new movement in
scholarship in which game design elements and mechanics are applied to non-game
environments (Dominquez, Saenz-ed-Navarrete, de-Marcos, Fernandez-Sanz, Pages, &
Martinez-Herraiz, 2013; Landers, 2013; Lee & Hammer, 2011).

The study of history within HASS can sometimes be very boring for students of various
years. Why not use some of the games that students love and apply them to learning in the
classroom. There are numerous historical computer games available and some have been
researched for their use in the classroom. Rome Total War (2004), Rome Total War II (2013)
and Attila Total War (2015) are three popular real-time strategy/turn-based strategy games,
which simulate ancient warfare in Classical Antiquity (272 BCE to c. 100 CE) and Late
Antiquity (395 CE to 600 CE). Three studies have been conducted on using this game for
educational purposes. Burgos, Tattersall and Koper (2006) devised an activity for Rome Total
War where they found that playing the game was easy for the teacher; however, it is played as an
isolated learning objective with no consequences to the main learning. Metzger and Paxton did a
similar study (2016) where they examined various Historical games (including Rome Total War
I and II) for educational purposes. They found the games were historically inaccurate and would
never be suited for education unless developers took more advice from scholars (Metzger &
Paxton, 2016). A final study (2009), was conducted by Ghita who researched Rome Total War
and found it to be a perfectly valid educational tool because it was historically accurate and it
was a commercial version of experimental archaeology. For example, she thought the way units
fought in battle, such as the Gauls with their long deadly swords to be historically accurate
according to Polybius, Histories 2.27-30 (Ghita, 2009).

Currently in SCSA (2017) one of the learning units in year 7 Depth Study two is
investigating one of five ancient societies, such as Rome and learning about significant beliefs,
values and practices of the ancient society, with a particular emphasis on one of the following
Applying Rome II Total War in Education 3

areas: everyday, warfare, or death and funerary customs (SCSA, 2017). Why not get students to
play Rome Total War II in class, acting out a historical battle which they must research in a
previous class and then play the following class in teams versus each other, much like Time
Commanders, a BBC television show that uses Total War software. Based on the scholarship, if
someone was to do this activity in a school they would have to be cautious and advise the
students that this is commercial experimental archaeology.
Applying Rome II Total War in Education 4

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2017). Australian Professional
Standards for Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-
professionalstandards-for-teachers/standards/list

BBC. (2017). Time Commanders. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084zh3v

Burgos, D., Tattersall, C. & Koper, R. (2007) Re-purposing existing generic games and
simulations for e-learning. Computers in human behavior. 23(6), 2656-2667.

Dominguez, A., Saenz-de-Navarrete, J., de-Marcos, L., Fernandez-Sanz, L., Pages, C., &
Martinez-Herraiz, J. (2013). Gamifying Learning Experiences: Practical Implications and
Outcomes. Computers & Education. 63, 380-392.

Ghita, C. (2009). Total War and Total Realism: A Battle for Antiquity in Computer Game
History. In D. Lowe, & K. Shahabudin (Eds.), Classics for All: Reworking Antiquity in
Mass Culture. (pp. 109-126).

Landers, R. (2014). Developing a Theory of Gamified Learning. Simulation & Gaming. 45(6),
752-768.

Lee, J. J. & Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother? Academic
Exchange Quarterly, 15(2). Retrieved from
https://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/resources/upload/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf

Metzger, S. A. & Paxton, R. J. (2016). Gaming history: A framework for what video games
teach about the past. Theory and research in social education. 44(4), 532-564.

SCSA. (2017). Humanities and Social Sciences. Retrieved from

http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/p-10-curriculum/curriculum-
browser/humanitiesand-social-sciences

Total War. (2017). Games. Retrieved from https://www.totalwar.com/#games