Video Game is Required ‘Reading’ For New College Course

Video games as college course required “reading”? In addition to Aristotle’s “Politics,” Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” and the “Tao Te Ching,” freshman attending  Wabash College will also be required to play “Portal” a first-person game where players solve a series of puzzles using a device that creates teleportation portals, as part of a new course that begins in the spring. Students enrolled at the small liberal arts men’s college in Crawfordsville, Ind., will have to both attend and pass the new course in order to graduate.

Developed in part by Michael Abbott, a Wabash teacher and the the designer of “Portal,” the all-college Humanities course, “Enduring Questions” is “devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives,” and will “confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world.” The school will start using “Portal” in a smaller subsections of the course as they work out some of the technological hurdles before expanding to the full course.

Abbott, who also writes The Brainy Game Blog, thought that a game would be the perfect way to challenge students to think about the topics and issues discussed in the “Enduring Questions” course. After an initial pitch, Abbott’s colleagues were game to give “Portal” a try, and even though they were not gamers themselves, they did like it, he reports. “We enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I’ve ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines.”

Described as a “space-and-mind-bending game of teleportation and deception,” “Portal” will probably make a few students wish for a Cliff Notes edition. Fingers-crossed for “Intro to Mario Kart”?

via MSN

Pictured: A screenshot from “Portal”