I believe digital games have enormous potential to enhance education - both games that are primarily designed for entertainment and games designed for learning. The recent resurgence of practical application of and academic discussion about this is very encouraging. But ultimately, what matters the most is how game mechanics may become a useful and effective part of the learning environment (whether through digital, board or live-action components) and not solely how a student may learn from sitting at and interacting with a computer. To draw general conclusions about the effectiveness of games in education based narrowly on the latter approach would be unhistorical and to disregard a few centuries of use of games for other purposes than to entertain. It would also be to ignore the profound impact that non-digital experiential learning games and activities have had for at least 50 years and their dealing - often successfully - with many of the questions and challenges that present-day digital serious games projects face in education. I believe that a comprehensive approach to games and learning needs to focus on how game design principles and methods can support learning objectives and effectively integrate with and/or complement existing resources (teachers, classrooms, technology etc) rather than whether a specific form, tool or platform can be put to use. --
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 20:27:46 +0000
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