Educators can include game-based learning into their curriculum, despite budgetary issues. Integrating game-based learning can be done with both nondigital games and digital games to reap the benefits associated with student engagement. Educators and students can use resources, apps and websites when constrained by a limited budget. A large budget is not a necessity, in fact, educators can’t afford not to use game-based learning to engage their students.
Serious game play addresses a number of academic abilities that are quite valuable in the contemporary work market, a market that requires workers with strong collaborative skills and the ability to think creatively. As research emerges regarding the efficacy of both digital and analog game-based methods of learning, governmental and business leaders have sought ways to institutionalize the kinds of learning needed to develop a workforce senstive to the needs of today’s market. As author Richard Florida notes,
New forms of organization that are more conducive to creativity have been evolving and taking root, from the no-collar workplace and the creative factory to emerging Creative Communities around the country. The task ahead is build on these efforts, carrying them forward into all spheres of society. And to do so will require new forms of social cohesion in line with the new realities of the new age. (Florida, 2002)
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Gaming based learning promises to be an emerging strategy in forming the social cohestion Florida points to as a critical element of the modern economy. Gaming strenghthens collaborative abilities among students by exercising those skills sets in the course of game play, and research into the effects of game play on student achievement has revealed that many of the skills for social organization fall into categories of metrics beyond those tracked by traditional standardized tests.
Immersive interactive technologies-— or “video games” — are now a powerful social, technological and cultural force that educational technologists are fnding difficult to ignore (Squire, 2002). Not only do games push the boundaries of interactivity, consumer-grade simulation, artificial intelligence and virtual world design, but they initiate students into practices, literacies and cultures central to the information age (Gee, 2003). And, as surveys by Beck and Wade (2004) show, participation in games cultures is promulgating cultural values such as entrepreneurship, an increased appetite for risk and a valuing of expertise over formal credentialing, all of which align with the values of new capitalism (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996) (Squire)
These skills are central to the 21st economy, (Florida) and despite the resistance mainstream education has shown in embracing game based learning, research has shown that educational games often reinforce practices and literacies that are beyond the scope of traditional classrooms to impart.
Game-based education represents a cost-effective way of schools to address these literacies and promote the development of key collaborative and cognitive skills inhernent in game structure, in both computer and non computer forms. Moreover, many students are already familiar with the technology and the part it plays in their everyday lives. Students born post 1990 have come of age in a world with an increasing amount of digital infrastructure upon which has grown a multitude of applications, platforms and devices to employ them on. Thus, one of the central promises of using gaming technology as an educational aid is capitalization of the familiarity with the technology that students already possess. There have even been instances of schools promoting the use of student owned devices. (Evans-Brown) And as with any technology, the possibilities for innovation increase as more users use a particular platform or software.
With increases in software programmability, we increase interactivity,
increase communication, increase learner adaptability, increase shared visualizations,increase shared laboratory access and increase experiential learning. In 20 years, weare going to see an impact equal to the printing press. This time we shall see a global, diverse, educated workforce deliver on dependable innovation, shared vision and collaborative creativity. (Hinrichs, 2004)
The research makes clear the wide ranging utility of games-based learning and its acute applicability to changes in the modern labor market. (Yun et al., 2009) There is evidence that much of the efficacy of games based learning is embedded in non-digital games as well. (Whitton, 2012) The manner in which games provoke inquiry, a greater degree of student engagement, and encourage failure as means to learning signals a profound evolution in the role of teachers. Therefore, teachers must be encouraged to attempt to understand the role game based learning is already having on students and quickly generate strategies to exploit the potentialities games based learning has for enhancing the educational process.
As Jennifer Hannaford notes in her article “Imaginative interaction with Internet games. For Children and Teachers’ Literacy,” games based learning offers an opportunity to educators to equip students with skills to embrace an emerging set of literarcies.
There is a growing body of research exploring the impact of changing technology on the concept of what it entails to be literate, and what we understand this term to encompass. Luke and Lankshear (cited in Nixon et al., 2006, p. 120) suggest that a component of the necessary new literacy portfolio is information and communication technologies (ICT) management as producers and critical consumers. To assist children to develop these skills, educators must first understand the what and the how of the semiotic domains that children are already interacting with. (Hannaford, 2012)
Hannaford highlights the need for educators to be responsive to the emerging utility of game-based and game design and the educational dynamics these phenomena address. These apps exist in the lives of many students already and are low cost and easy to use. What must be heightened is an understanding of how this technology can fully utilized and implented. But it is clear that there are opportunties for vibrant and cost effective change in the way we educate our students and the manner we use computer games to do so.
- Evans-Brown, S. (Writer) (2012). “Some schools actually want students to play with their smartphones in class”[Radio series episode]. In All Tech Considered. New Hampshire Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/
- An, Y., & Bonk, C. (2009). Designing Digital Game-Based Learning Environments. Tech Trends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 53, 43-48. Retrieved November 3, 2013, from http://www.springerlink.com.libweb.lib.utsa.edu
- Florida, Richard. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York, Basic Books.
- Kebritchi, M., Hirumi, A., Kappers, W., & Henry, R. (2009). Analysis of the supporting websites for the use of instructional games in K-12 settings. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(4), 733-754.
- Hannaford, J. (2012). Imaginative interaction with Internet games. For Children and Teachers. Literacy, 46(1), 25-32.
- Hinrichs, R. (2004). A vision for lifelong learning: Year 2020‡. European Journal of Engineering Education, 29(1), 5-16.
- Squire, K., Giovanetto, L., Devane, B., & Durga, S. (2005). From users to designers: Building a self-organizing game-based learning environment. TechTrends, 49(5), 34-42.
- Whitton, N. (2012). The Place of Game-Based Learning in an Age of Austerity. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 10, 249-256.
