One thing to keep in mind while viewing the results is that the survey was entirely an experiment; I wasn’t entirely convinced that outside of my group of friends I’d attract much attention. I was pleasantly wrong. Most of the questions required short-answer responses, and the lack of quantitative data collected makes the sheer number of responses unmanageable in many ways. Along the lines of oral histories, many of the responses shed light into how students played the game in the classroom, and how they remember parts of the game. I’ve had luck navigating the responses by using keywords, although without being able to bundle similar responses it’s difficult measure the number of occurrences. Still, patterns in the results can be discerned. Here are the questions I asked:

Year of Birth:
Gender:
State:
Game Version:
Where did you play the game?
How often did you play the game?
Was the game taught with a lesson on the trail, or did you just play the game?
What was your favorite part of the game?
What was your least favorite part of the game?
How were Indian characters portrayed in the game?
How were female characters portrayed in the game?
How were male characters portrayed in the game?
What did the West look like in the game? Do you think this was accurate?
Do you think the game accurately portrayed the Oregon Trail? Why/Why Not?
Any additional comments or memories of the game:

The object of the survey was to have respondents recount representation within the game, judge whether or not they think this memory of the game is accurate, as well as give insight into how the game was used within an educational setting. Understanding historical representation in the classroom, and measuring the effectiveness of the game to present that knowledge was of key interest.

Beyond the educational goals of the game, many of the survey responses discussed elements of the game that I glossed over in my research, but resonated with students. One of these was the ability to name characters in the game. Here are some interesting quotes related to that:

I liked the excitement of it. It felt like an adventure, plus you could always name your crush as your husband in your party!

I would use my friends names as members of my wagon train

Being able to name people… And then letting the ones I didn’t like die, or rub salt in their wounds, etc. Morbid, I know, but I think most kids will agree that was the best part of the game.

the first time I played, the people I played with named all our characters after the X-men because they were popular at the time, because of the cartoon.

Also fun to name your characters stupid things. My personal favorites were names like “Nobody” or “Somebody” or “Everybody,” so that the game would be like “Somebody has cholera” and you’d be like ‘but who?’ and “Nobody has died” and you’re like ‘Whew, that’s a relief.’

The last response was the best IMHO.

Many people may not realize that The Oregon Trail was originally a game written for teletype machines – what were essentially typewriters connected to a computer mainframe. Those computers originally made-up MECC’s backbone, with one computer shared by each school district using time-sharing. Dale’s interview gives insight into MECC’s decision-making process in 1973, explaining decisions that had a ripple effect across the world of educational computing. Dale recounts:

MECC dispatched two people out to talk to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were the 21-year-old kids with the new Apple computer. They had already announced their intent to save the world and they were going to help education using the computer. They had no information about what we were doing in Minnesota. They didn’t know anybody was using computers in schools. We told them about MECC and said we’d like to buy five Apple II’s at a special price. They gave us a special price. We brought the five back to Minnesota to sell to Minnesota schools. Minnesota schools not only bought five, but that year we sold over 500 Apple II computers. [...] Moving on to 1980, MECC became the largest seller of Apple computers. And so it happened that Apple got its start in the educational computing business through its Minnesota connection.

What’s also interesting is Dale’s discussion of the decision made to sell MECC, which was a state-owned operation, to a company (MECC would then become the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation). According to Dale, both IBM and Apple weren’t interested in such an acquisition.