World History Taught Through Computer Games at AGU

A world history course was designed with history-themed computer games at Abdullah Gül University (AGU). Students learn history through history-themed computer games in addition to the traditional teaching methods.

In the "Playing With The Past" course designed by the AGU Architecture and Computer Engineering, students are introduced into the world history with history-themed computer games in addition to the traditional teaching methods.

Dr. A. Erdem Tozoğlu, faculty member of Architecture, and Dr. M. Şükrü Kuran, faculty member of Computer Engineering, teach the course together and hope that students will have experience-based, in-depth knowledge using elaborate strategy games covering from Medieval times to the present.

Aiming to go beyond learn-by-rote history courses with games, history is taught around the idea "What would I do if I were there."

Various strategy games developed by the Swedish Paradox Interactive company are used for the course (e.g., Europa Universalis IV) and students publish their experiences on a blog every week (playingwithpast.wordpress.com).

Dr. A. Erdem Tozoğlu from Architecture said the course became very fun for students as a new perspective was brought to the history course.

Tozoğlu added: "With this perspective, we hope to close the distance between students and the historical periods. Students have trouble with understanding historical periods. What we do here is facilitating their understanding by making history courses fun with technology and computer games."

Dr. M. Şükrü Kuran, faculty member of Computer Engineering, stated that in a traditional history course students become third-person bystanders outside of topics rather than persons involved in them.

Kuran shared the following about the course:

"Our aim with this course methodology is ensuring that students imagine themselves in that period, seek answers to the question 'What would I do if I were there' and learn deeply. We use very elaborate strategy games in our course to realize that aim. These strategy games model social structures with the medieval, new and modern ages and try to emulate the history to a certain extent with artificial intelligence based on this model. Students control a country in the general sense. They think how they would have behaved within that system. After they have their own experience, they publish their ideas on the blog playingwithpast.wordpress.com

As a new educational method and an experimental one, the "Playing With The Past" course is hoped to inspire similar courses in Turkey and the World and be developed.