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We live in a time of educational transformations towards more 21st century pedagogies and learning. Games and Education explores new designs in and for learning and offer inspiration to teachers, technologist and researchers interested in changing educational practices.
The pervasive use of games by students and their integration in formal education by a number of pioneer teachers creates a need for a different frame-of-mind to look at the learning experience offered by such innovative technology-enhanced learning experiences. Educational computer games are related to two disciplines, which are computer sciences (in particular, eLearning and related areas) and games development. A pattern-based design approach to overcome the problems and challenges of learning-games is proposed in this book. The aim is to awaken the learning-game community to approach learning-game design more structurally and to motivate them to communally create a theoretical and practical basis for learning-game design and game-based learning research. Furthermore, given the popularity of computer games and the educational and ethical problems they raise, we need a way of evaluating games. This book contributes to this task by articulating the epistemic, moral, and ethical aims of education and by applying these criteria to computer games.
Can we learn through play? Can we really play while learning? Of course! But how?! We all learn and educate others in our own unique ways. Successful educational games adapt to the particular learning needs of their players and facilitate the learning objectives of their designers. Educational Game Design Fundamentals embarks on a journey to explore the necessary aspects to create games that are both fun and help players learn. This book examines the art of educational game design through various perspectives and presents real examples that will help readers make more informed decisions when creating their own games. In this way, readers can have a better idea of how to prepare for and organize the design of their educational games, as well as evaluate their ideas through several prisms, such as feasibility or learning and intrinsic values. Everybody can become education game designers, no matter what their technical, artistic or pedagogic backgrounds. This book refers to educators and designers of all sorts: from kindergarten to lifelong learning, from corporate training to museum curators and from tabletop or video game designers to theme park creators!
This book represents a four-year research and development project. It presents a phenomenological examination and explanation of a functional design framework for games in education. It furnishes a rich description of the experiences and perceptions of performing interdisciplinary collaborative design among experts of very diverse fields, such as learning systems design, architectural design, assessment design, mathematics education, and scientific computing.
This book provides an overview of the design and development of learning games using examples from those created by the authors over last decade. It provides lessons learned about processes, successful approaches, and pitfalls that befall developers of learning games and educational transmedia experiences. The book includes stories from the authors’ lives that give context to why and how they built these products to help the reader understand whether or not building a learning game is right for them and what challenges they might face. It also gives a framework for thinking ethically about design and research when it comes to designing complex digital systems like educational games. /div
The field of Games is rapidly expanding, prompting institutions throughout the world to create game development programs and courses focusing on educational games. As a result, games have also become a hot topic in the area of educational technology research. This increased interest is due to the technological advancement of digital games and the fact that a new, digital generation is emerging with a strong gaming background. Games: Purpose and Potential in Education focuses on the issues of incorporating games into education and instructional design. Ideas of identity development, gender diversity, motivation, and integrating instructional design within game development are addressed since each of these areas is important in the field of instructional design and can have a significant impact on learning. This volume brings together leading experts, researchers, and instructors in the field of gaming and explores current topics in gaming and simulations, available resources, and the future of the field.
"A series of well argued but surprisingly entertaining articles go far to set the very foundations ofthe field of digital game based learning. This book is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in games and learning and will be for years to come." - James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University
Aesthetics and Design for Game-based Learning provides learning designers with insight into how the different elements that comprise game aesthetics can inform the design of game-based learning. Regardless of the cognitive complexities involved, games are essentially entertainment media, and aesthetics play a large role in how they are experienced. Yet too often the role of aesthetics in the research about game-based learning has been relegated to a surface discussion of graphics or neglected altogether. Aesthetics and Design for Game-based Learning begins by addressing the broad context of game aesthetics, then addresses specific elements with chapters focusing on: player positioning game mechanics narrative design environment design character design. Each chapter includes research and guidelines for design, and a conclusion addresses aesthetics in the research of game-based learning.
Principles for designing educational games that integrate content and play and create learning experiences connecting to many areas of learners' lives. Too often educational videogames are narrowly focused on specific learning outcomes dictated by school curricula and fail to engage young learners. This book suggests another approach, offering a guide to designing games that integrates content and play and creates learning experiences that connect to many areas of learners' lives. These games are not gamified workbooks but are embedded in a long-form experience of exploration, discovery, and collaboration that takes into consideration the learning environment. Resonant Games describes twenty essential principles for designing games that offer this kind of deeper learning experience, presenting them in connection with five games or collections of games developed at MIT's educational game research lab, the Education Arcade. Each of the games—which range from Vanished, an alternate reality game for middle schoolers promoting STEM careers, to Ubiquitous Bio, a series of casual mobile games for high school biology students—has a different story, but all spring from these fundamental assumptions: honor the whole learner, as a full human being, not an empty vessel awaiting a fill-up; honor the sociality of learning and play; honor a deep connection between the content and the game; and honor the learning context—most often the public school classroom, but also beyond the classroom.
At a time when digital games are becoming much more commonly used in classrooms, Game-Based Learning: Theory, Strategies, and Performance Outcomes provides a much-needed guide to different forms and applications of digital game-based learning. This book brings together researchers and practitioners from around the world who share their theories, strategies, findings of case studies, and practical approaches to support better performance and learning outcomes when learning with digital games. This book is intended to provide readers with three main parts of information. One is a clear and practical understanding of theory and research-based principles of game-based learning. This first section of the book includes fresh perspectives and an overview of existing and emerging theories in game-based learning, which are also presented in the form of case study findings and implications. The second section of this book gives readers the "how to" information needed to turn the understanding of intellectual grounding into effective practices of digital games for classroom use. The third part of this book also includes some practical approaches for evaluating different aspects of learning within the game-based learning context. This information about practical approaches is presented through chapters on achievements and performance outcomes. Game-Based Learning: Theory, Strategies, and Performance Outcomes synthesizes arguments, practices, and research findings on the effectiveness of different designs and approaches within game-based learning practices. But, a major message of this book is that the joint influence of implementation, context, and learner characteristics interacting with digital games is what determines learning and achievement outcomes. This book is intended for researchers, practitioners, designers, policy makers, and current and future teachers. The teacher/-educator will benefit from topics such as practical strategies to improve student performance, while researchers can use the findings from the case studies presented in this book as a foundation for future explorations and research studies.
