Mayo, Merrilea J. “Games for Science and Engineering Education.” Communications of the ACM 50.7 (2007): 30-35. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

Games for Science and Engineering Education is an article written by Merrilea Mayo that discusses the benefits of video games to promote students interest in US STEM education. Mayo’s argument addresses research that evaluates traditional lecture in classrooms and their efficiently in the US when compared to the rest of the world. Although they are cost efficient, she believes lectures do not promote an active and in-depth education. Mayo feels that the lack of interest in science and engineering majors could be stimulated by using video games to promote STEM as fun and interesting. Merrilea supports video games potential to increase education by presenting 5 main reasons, which are massive reach, enhanced brain chemistry, effective learning, time on task, and the ability to measure the learning curve of gamers/students through the computer software. The evidence she presents is rich in statistics and connects to the logos of the reader which makes her argument believable. Upon further analysis of her argument it is evident that while she provides a lot of statistics downgrading US lectures she fails to show evidence on their effectiveness. It is unrealistic to assume video games can take the place of lectures in advanced college courses such as Calculus and Differential Equations so while her idea may work in elementary courses it would have little effect later on. Mayo’s argument would be useful in research due to her extensive use of statistical evidence comparing US education to other countries, yet the true effectiveness of video games in real life scenarios and classrooms lends way to question if her notion is probable.