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License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed) Attribution: Games and the Future of Education | ABUNDANCEby XPRIZE
Instructional designers may during their career be involved in the identification, recommendation, or selection of the inclusion of gaming into courses. This section introduces this topic and considers what makes learning games effective.
Learning Objectives
- Define game, simulation and simulation games and give examples of each.
- Describe features of computer-based games for learning that contribute to their effectiveness.
- Describe possible approaches to implementing computer-based games for learning in your context.
- Describe possible approaches to creating your own games for learning.
- List the twelve elements that make learning games engaging.
Introduction to Computer-based Games for Learning
students are not the people our educational system
was designed to teach … Our Digital Immigrant
instructors … are struggling to teach a population
that speaks an entirely new language”. – Prensky
(2001b)
Computer-based games are a major entertainment and cultural force (Gamasutra, 2006). Creative ideas using sophisticated graphics and communication technologies are changing the way we spend our leisure time, build friendships and communities, try out new identities, and practice new skills. Whether or not computer-based games are part of your daily life, they offer opportunities to engage and challenge your students. You may be a gamer, familiar with the Xbox, Grand Theft Auto, and EverQuest,, and wondering why school isn’t as absorbing as your late night game sessions. You may be a boomer professor, curious but not sure how games could be relevant to your teaching. Or you may be somewhere in between. This section of the chapter gives you a broad introduction to the use of computer based games for learning. We start with basic terms and move on to look at why these activities can be powerful learning tools, drawing on current learning theory, game research, and recent experience. After presenting examples to spark your own learning game ideas, we discuss factors that make learning games effective. The chapter closes with tips for successfully getting started using games in your learning context.
Because the word “game” can describe many different activities and varieties of play, we start with a few definitions. Speaking very generally,
A game is a set of activities with goals, rules, and competition (possibly with oneself) that involve one or more players in an artificial situation (Dempsey et al., 1996; Sauvé et al., under review). Games such as tennis, basketball, Tic Tac Toe, chess, checkers, and Monopoly have been around much longer than computers. Since personal game machines and computers have become widely available, a wide variety of dynamic, interactive electronic games have appeared in many genres. Some familiar titles are the Carmen Sandiego series, Myst, Doom, various sports games, and EverQuest. Many co