Using Minecraft to Encourage Critical Engagement of
Geography Concepts
Jonathan List
The University of Akron
United States
list.jonathan@gmail.com
Brent Bryant
Northern Potter School District
United States
bbryant@northernpottersd.org
Much of the research surrounding technology in the Geography curriculum focuses on
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geographic Positioning System (GPS) units.
Studies have examined how these tools can benefit student learning, however GIS can be
difficult to learn, and GPS can be cost prohibitive. This study investigates the use of the
video game Minecraft as a virtual world to teach students geography concepts.
Much of the research surrounding technology in the Geography curriculum focuses on
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geographic Positioning System (GPS) units. Studies
have examined how these tools can benefit student learning, however GIS can be difficult to
learn, and GPS can be cost prohibitive. This study investigates the use of the video game
Minecraft as a virtual world to teach students geography concepts.
The students in this study attend a rural middle school in the Northeastern United States. They are
in the 7th grade and study geography under the tutelage of a veteran teacher. The teacher, Mr.
Williams (all names are pseudonyms), has been the the technology director for the school district
for three years, and a classroom teacher for 15 years. The students have access to computers
during the week through the use of a computer lab. During their time in the computer lab,
students access a virtual world and engage in activities to solidify their understanding of
geographical concepts. The virtual world selected for this task is provided by the popular video
game, Minecraft.
In this case study, we examine Mr. Williams’ use of Minecraft in the geography classroom. The
driving question behind this research is: In what ways can Minecraft encourage students to
critically engage in the learning of geography concepts. All of the activities in this study were
designed by Mr. Williams, based on his experience teaching social studies and geography.
Minecraft
Minecraft is a popular sandboxing video game that uses naturalistic principles to govern
many of the game mechanics. Players participate in an 8-bit analogue of the world, interacting
with various types of flora and fauna. When players begin the game, they typically have no
resources at their disposal and must collect materials to build tools. They can then use tools to
gather further resources (food, minerals, ore, etc.). Beyond requiring players to collect and build
their own resources, the game generates a world with a variety of geographical regions that the
creators call biomes. These biomes can range from Arctic and Jungle to Ocean and Desert. Each
biome provides different resources and challenges.
Beyond the basic mechanics of the game, players can participate in any activity that they
would like. They can harvest resources to build magnificent structures, or dig deep into the Earth
to find minerals that allow the students to make more complex tools and machines. The danger of
digging too deep is that hostile elements in the game tend to gather in the dark recesses of the
world. The same danger exists if a player does not build a shelter; hostile elements come out at
night and can terrorize the player. All other mobile and active elements of the game not
controlled by players are called mobs. Dangerous mobs are called hostile, and the rest, including
cows, chickens, horses and pigs, are called neutral mobs.
A more recent addition to the game was the need for the players to find and consume
food. If the players do not regularly consume food, they will begin taking damage and eventually
die and need to respawn. While this doesn’t necessarily have any negative impacts on the game,
players will lose any equipment they are carrying with them, and will need to return to the point
of their death to be able to collect the dropped equipment before the game automatically removes
it.
All of these elements combine to make an interesting environment for use in a geography
classroom. Students have to be able to apply geography skills in order to complete tasks put forth
by the classroom teacher.
Literature Review
Our implementation of Minecraft in the classroom is based, in part, on the work of
several researchers. J. Paul Gee has a series of principles to consider about the educational
principles of video games (2005). Kurt Squire seeks better understand what it is about video
games that allows players to learn and understand different aspects of the game while playing
(2006; 2008a; 2008b). Minecraft was integrated into a Geography curriculum which relied
heavily on the five themes of geography, and this study aligns itself with recent calls for research
in Geography (Association of American Geographers, 2013; Jalongo, 2007; Natoli, 1994). While
Geography, Minecraft and Gee’s principles of video games in education provide the framework
for this research, Gee’s principles tie everything together.
Paul Gee’s principles of video games are designed to help educators understand the
various elements of video games. From Gee’s body of work, the number of principles can range
from 13 (Squire & Steinkuehler, 2013) to 36 (Gee, 2007). For the purposes of our research, we
focus on five of his principles, namely:
●
Interaction
●
Customization
●
Agency
●
Situated Meanings
●
Explore, Think Laterally, Rethink Goals (Gee, 2005).
Interaction is the process of allowing the students to engage in a dialogue with the
content. Instead of merely reading a text and having a one-way conversation, students do
something and the video game responds(Gee, 2005; Jalongo, 2007). The interactive nature of
Minecraft allows students to use materials, experience environmental conditions, farm animals,
manage hostile mobs and work with other players. Instead of just conceptualizing ideas, students
can engage setting in which those ideas are presented in a virtual form.
Customization is dependent on interaction in that the game must be able to respond to user input.
This principle refers to both the possibility to influence game mechanics as well as how the game
is played (Gee, 2005; Squire 2008a). In Minecraft, players can download special graphics sets
that will influence how the game looks, design the way their player looks and build whatever
types of structures they can imagine.
Agency relates to who has control in the game setting. Players are given control of a
character or multiple characters, depending on the game being played. This control gives the
students a feeling of ownership in the process (Gee, 2005; Jalongo, 2007; Squire 2008a). The
process of putting the student in control of learning, is key to understanding situated meanings
and exploration, thinking laterally and rethinking goals. When students are presented with
problems or tasks in the game, they use the context of the game to develop understandings or
situated meanings. This can lead the students to explore, think laterally and rethink goals
(Gaudelli, Taylor, Bull & Bell, 2011; Gee, 2005). Minecraft allows students to attempt one
solution to a problem, then revise their thinking and try another solution.
Video games, as a whole, are able to encourage critical thinking through their use of well
defined puzzles that serve to identify and provide clues about how to solve a broader, less welldefined problem (Steinkuehler, 2008). Add to this the design experience of the game, where
players are able to experience a process, and a platform of potential authentic learning comes into
view (Squire, 2006). Furthermore, since Minecraft allows the teachers to build the design
experience to fit their needs, educators can use this tool to teach a wide variety of concepts.
Minecraft Activities and Outcomes
Students engaged in a variety of activities within the game-world of Minecraft. Each
activity related to understanding concepts in geography. After students learned the mechanics of
the game, they were give a basic task: Stay alive for a full day in the game world. Then students
were asked to use the in-game coordinates to navigate their avatars to a specific location without
losing any team members. When the students’ avatars have arrived at the location, they were
directed to build a colony that could defend itself from hostile entities. Finally, once the colonies
were established, students were given opportunities to trade for goods and services with other
colonies along trade routes.
The first activity required the students to stay alive for a full day. Not only does this
activity cement the mechanics of the game for the students, it also provides an opportunity to
learn about their location. They begin to develop a relationship with the place that they started the
game. Are there features of the landscape that will help protect the students? Are there materials
they can use to build? What is the easiest way to build something to survive the night?
After students learned to survive, they were given a set of coordinates and asked to move
their avatars to those coordinates. The coordinates are far enough away that the students will not
be able to make the journey completely during the day, and must learn ways of keeping
themselves safe along the journey. This activity focused on Location, Relationships with Place
and Relationships between Places.
Once students arrived at their new home coordinates, they started building their colonies
with the materials at their disposal. Students were directed to work together and share the taskload. Students were able to build small villages that were easily defensible. This task dealt with
Location, Place and Regions: How they form and Change. With respect to the last principle of
Geography, students were required to take screenshots of their new location before they started
building, then compare those images with screenshots taken after the colony was completed.
During the migration phase, students were placed into separate groups and kept apart by
use of a special plugin. After they had developed their colonies, they were given access to the
other villages for purposes of trade. Students were required to make the journey either by foot,
boat or train. This further addressed issues of Location, Relationships with Place, Relationships
between places and How Regions change and form (especially when the players want to put a
train between the villages).
Student’s Actions
The first activity, after the students were acclimated to the gameplay through a specialized
tutorial, was for the students to survive on full Minecraft day. During the day, all non-player
characters are generally benign, and will not attack a player unprovoked. Once the sun goes down
in the game, creatures are created that are naturally hostile to players. In order to survive, players
must have shelter. Several players felt they would be safer without other around, but soon found
that groups of students were safer than individual students. Students remarked that the most
helpful thing was building some sort of shelter, but that classmates leaving the group posed
problems. When asked, “What actions did not help you to survive the night?” students responded
that leaving was a problem (17 out of 42 students). Students were able, with the teachers help, to
understand the need to develop an organized group, or civilization. Students were also able to
understand that this organization is important because they need to learn ways to stay alive.
During the second lesson, students were forced to examine issues facing the development
of a civilization, namely the acquisition of enough food materials for all citizens to be well-fed.
The classroom teacher taught a lesson related to animal husbandry, and then explained how
students could domesticate animals within the game world. Students then attempted to
domesticate animals and stay alive through another day, further reinforcing the concept that a
well organized group has better chances of survival than a loosely organized group wandering
through the wilderness of the game world.
After the students learned about animal husbandry and its relationship to emerging
civilizations, students were tasked with the job of developing an official neolithic village.
Students read an article about neolithic villages and ways of surviving and were asked to plan
their neolithic villages. Students were divided into groups and were asked to start building their
villages, but the students were unable to stay alive long enough to keep the village growing.
In order to remedy this situation, the classroom teacher assigned the students the task of
staying alive until level 5. Once presented with a specific challenge that required the students to
accountably stay alive, the students worked more diligently on avoiding hostile elements of the
game world.
After the students were able to stay alive and gain experience in the game world, they
were given the opportunity to move into the next stage of human development: The Stone Age.
Students were permitted to build stone tools and advance their civilizations through the Iron Age,
and begin developing more complex machinery. The game does not have bronze, per-se, but does
require that students have stone tools to mine iron, and iron tools to mine harder substances, thus
simulating various pre-historic ages of development.
As the students became more skilled in playing minecraft, they began farming and
mining in more organized ways. They were able to collect milk from cows, and somewhat
organize themselves into groups. The classroom teacher then asked the students to engage in
another task related to better understanding common topics in social studies. He asked them to
build a scale replica of the Pyramids at Giza.
The students were able to create approximations of the Pyramids, however they struggled
with the actual building and design of the pyramids. One group of students attempted to build a
pyramid one side at a time and ended up with a side that looked more like a slanted stadium wall
than a side of a Pyramid. Once the students realized their mistake, they began removing parts of
the wall that were inappropriate for the shape of a pyramid. The students were able to mostly
complete the outer shell of the pyramid. This lesson helped the students to better understand the
volume of time and resources required for a project such as building a pyramid.
Discussion
Once the students were able to stay alive for a full game-day, they were able to explain
any geographical features that factored into their survival. Some of the players indicated that
having trees nearby was beneficial because it allowed them to build tools more quickly to dig
shelters. Others felt that sand was the most useful material for a single night of survival because it
was easy to harvest with their hands and build a tower tall enough to protect them from hostile
mobs. Overall, they did not engage the intended geographical considerations, instead they
focused on the social implications of collaboration during gameplay.
As they continued playing through the activities designed for them by Mr. Williams, the
students were able to focus on more of the geography content included in the game. Once the
students were given the task of building something that was dependent on their location in the
game world, they were able to consider concepts such as human-environment interactions and
movement.
Conclusions
Data processing is on-going at this time, and further conclusions and discussion ideas will
be given once data processing is complete. Based on early indications, we believe that students
will be able to demonstrate learning of the five themes of geography, but they may have difficulty
in using images to depict each of the core concepts included in the curriculum.
References
Gaudelli, W., & Taylor, A. (2011). Modding the global classroom? Serious video games
and teacher reflection. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education,
11(1), 70–91.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.
Computers in Entertainment, 1(1), 20–20.
Gee, J. P. (2005). Good Video Games and Good Learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 85(2),
33.
Gee, J. P. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (Rev.
and updated ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gee, J. P. (2012). DIGITAL GAMES AND LIBRARIES. Knowledge Quest, 41(1), 60–
64.
Hofer, M., & Swan, K. O. (2008). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge in
Action: A Case Study of a Middle School Digital Documentary Project. Journal of
Research on Technology in Education, 41(2), 179–200.
Jalongo, M. R. (2007). Beyond Benchmarks and Scores: Reasserting the Role of
Motivation and Interest in Children’s Academic Achievement an ACEI Position Paper.
Childhood Education, 83(6), 395–407. doi:10.1080/00094056.2007.10522958
Martin, C., & Steinkuehler, C. (2010). Collective Information Literacy in Massively
Multiplayer Online Games. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(4), 355.
doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.355
Natoli, S. J. (1994). Guidelines for Geographic Education and the Fundamental Themes
in Geography. Journal of Geography, 93(1), 2–6. doi:10.1080/00221349408979676
Saye, J., & Social Studies Inquiry Research Col. (2013). Authentic Pedagogy: Its
Presence in Social Studies Classrooms and Relationship to Student Performance on StateMandated Tests. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41(1), 89–132.
doi:10.1080/00933104.2013.756785
Squire, K. D. (2008a). Video game-based learning: An emerging paradigm for
instruction. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 21(2), 7–36.
Squire, K. D. (2008b). Video-Game Literacy: A Literacy of Expertise. In J. Coiro, M.
Knobel, C. Lankshear, & D. J. Leu (Eds.), Handbook of research on new litearcies (pp.
635–669). New York NY: Taylor & Francis.
Squire, K. D. (2008). Video game–based learning: An emerging paradigm for instruction.
Performance Improvement Quarterly, 21(2), 7–36.
Steinkuehler, C. (2008). Massively Multiplayer Online Games as an Educational
Technology: An Outline for Research. Educational Technology, 48(1), 10–21.