Saturday October 5th, 2024
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US Study Claims Assassin's Creed: Origins Improves Students' Learning on Ancient Egypt

The latest and greatest installment of the long-running series provides players with a window into a time gone by.

Staff Writer

US Study Claims Assassin's Creed: Origins Improves Students' Learning on Ancient Egypt

Assassin's creed: Origins was released in 2017, and to our delight portrays ancient Egypt vividly and pretty accurately for the most part.  Set in around 47 B.C, during the end of the Ptolemaic era, you play Bayek or Arya, who must protect the Egyptian people while Ptolemy the 13th attempts to maintain control of the nation. Since the release of this game, Ubisoft has released a new DLC, Discovery Mode, and this has really shocked the world with some teachers proclaiming it can be used in classrooms.

Discovery mode throws players into ancient Egypt where they can embark on 75 different virtual tours exploring so many different landmarks such as the Pyramids of Giza  (which are exact replicas) and the Sphinx as well as learning about farming, how they made pottery and even baking. There could be "tremendous value in it," says Edyeli Marku, a middle-school teacher in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. This could be the start of a new method of teaching if this type of virtual education takes off. Marku went on to say that it could improve students' learning as it is "a different learning vehicle" and would help students who learn better visually or through audio.

The creative director for Assassins Creed: Origins had heard from educators who had seen the potential it had for educational purposes, but due to the violence it needed a little revamp. According to the New York Times, the University of Montreal has also been using the discovery mode of the game for a study on grade school students. A group of 330 students, ranging from 12-16 years old, were given a test on Ancient Egypt. After the test, half of them took a virtual tour of the Alexandrian Library while the other students had a lesson with the teacher after which they were tested again. Marc-Andres Ethier, the researcher who conducted the study, claimed that students who took the tour improved their scores by 22-44%, however students who took the lesson with the teacher had the better scores. Never the less, you can still learn about Ancient Egypt through a video game and it actually works, and now Ubisoft has released a new stand-alone version for computers to make the game more accessible to schools and start learning more about Egypt.

Main image from Assassin's Creed: Origins

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