I always pictured the University of Florida as a delightful candyland of debauchery, where women didn’t sheath themselves in North Face and even the lowliest of male specimens not named Tebow sexed it up regularly. I was wrong. Even in purported paradise, the nerds are taking over. You can now get class credit in Gainsville, for playing Starcraft.

Grad Student Nathaniel Polling is offering course IDS2935 “21st Century Skills in Starcraft.” He researches using video games for education. Essentially, students would play Starcraft online, record the games and analyze what happened in written reports. The Pong generation and their predecessors will scoff at this, but the idea seems sound.

Learning is obtaining information not exerting effort while doing so. The medium is irrelevant. I have a substantial knowledge of world capitals and major landmarks within them. I did not slave over a book for the information. I played hours of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

Starcraft is a great strategy game. It came out in 1998 when 56K was blazing. People were still playing it in 2010, when people are nonplussed by streaming feature length films to a cell phone. If it can be a more compelling way to teach game theory, adaptive reasoning and resource allocation in practice, so be it.

True to form, I expect the University of Michigan to come up with an elitist, esoteric and horribly impractical version of this class. “Impressions of 11th Century Chivalry in Warhammer.”

[Linguini via Getty]