Games & Learning, an analysis

by | Monday, April 09, 2012

TCRecord has an interesting essay on the role of games and learning, by Alexander, Eaton & Egan, titled: Cracking the code of electronic games: Some lessons for educators. As they say, “This is an analytic article that provides a description of an array of attempts to derive educational principles from the perceived success of students’ learning while they are engaged in electronic games.” They identify three key ways that games have been used in educational contexts.

First, seeing games as teaching desirable learning skills through the simple act of playing; second, a focus on the integration of curriculum content into games; and, third, an effort to abstract learning principles embedded in electronic games and applying these to educational content.

They argue that the first two approaches do not appear to have much value and that the greatest potential value comes from educators abstracting and applying learning principles that are embedded in electronic games to other educational contexts. I think this is a valuable insight. In particular I have always been skeptical of approaches that attempt to embed disciplinary content in to games. These approaches often end up distorting either game-play OR more importantly the nature of the discipline itself.

One approach that the authors seem not to have considered is that of the educational value of having students design their own games. There is a long history of this in the educational arena (and many years ago I had been involved in such a project). One paper from that work can be found here.  A talk I gave as a part of the  Drexel Learning Games Network seminar series, where I mentioned a range of different approaches to how games can be included in educational contexts, can be found here.

Topics related to this post: Design | Games | Learning | Research | Teaching | Technology

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Tipping point for online learning?

Tipping point for online learning?

Is the Covid19 crisis the tipping point for online learning? As we wrote in our introduction to the Silver Lining for Learning webinar series …this crisis has forced schools and universities to close, pushing often unprepared institutions to move teaching and learning...

Vijay Iyer, polymathy and trans-disciplinary creativity

Vijay Iyer,  (http://vijay-iyer.com/) is an Indian-American jazz pianist and composer. He is a MacArthur Genius grant winner and is currently Franklin and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University and is widely regarded as being one of...

Personality analysis of my blog

As you know I am always intrigued by a new breed to personality analysis tools that are out there in the world (for instance see these prior postings: on PersonalDNA; on Color IQ; and browsing for gender). So here is this new website that seeks to analyze me by...

TPACK, creativity and friends @ Singapore

I have been in Singapore the past few days at the invitation of Mike Thiruman and his team at Educare. Educare is a co-operative of the Singapore Teachers’ Union and sees itself as serving "teachers and schools so as to enhance the quality of teaching." I had two...

We feel fine about ambient findability (really?)

Most of us live our lives with the assumption of practical obscurity - i.e. the idea that what we do, even in public places, is essentially private. There are just too many people and just too few ways of tracking us individually. So we were for the most part,...

Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

One afternoon, back in December 2008, we made a couple of new year's videos to welcome the new year. It was not planned in any way—it was just a way to spend the afternoon since it was too cold to go outside. Thus began a tradition that goes strong even today—13 years...

Bringing sensory richness to bleak scientific texts

A while ago I had written about how we use language to capture intangible ideas - and the risks associated with not paying attention to these intangibles. I had said (though you can read the complete post A different language): For instance wine connoisseurs have...

Improv here, there, everywhere…

A few months ago I wrote about Professor R. K. Joshi (here and here). He was, as I said in the piece, maybe the single greatest influence on my role as a teacher. I had mentioned that R.K. loved absurdity and play. I was reminded of this when I read about this group...

Henriksen & Mishra, one of popular articles of 2015

Our recent article in TCRecord on how exemplary teachers incorporate creativity in their teaching (Henriksen & Mishra, 2015) was listed as one of the most popular articles of 2015! You can access the article by clicking the link above and, for the record, see...

1 Comment

  1. Homework Help

    It’s an interesting idea. I thought it’d be the educators who would generally create the game as a challenge in the learning environment to the student and not the student designing the game themselves.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *