Video Games For Learning Research Articles

From the Playroom to the Classroom: Children’s Views of Video Game Play and Academic Learning

Abstract— This article reviews research examining preadolescent and adolescent students’ views of video game and academic learning. This research contributes to discussions about how students’ engagement and approaches to problem-solving during video game play may transfer to the school setting. It highlights work from ongoing focus groups that, for example, shows that preadolescents and adolescents see both video game and school learning as providing venues for mastery and challenge. However, the locus of control for learning in the 2 venues varied: Preadolescents cited teachers as in control of their school learning and themselves as in control of their video game play. Regarding use of strategy, students saw seeking help from peers and family as appropriate problem-solving strategies for both video game and school learning. Notably, they cited trial-and-error strategies as relevant across both learning contexts, albeit far more often in reference to video game learning. The article concludes by considering ramifications of these findings for understanding transfer of learning from video game play to school learning.

Work in Progress: Emotion, ambiguity and telling stories: The role of neuroscience in using computer games for learning

Work in Progress: Emotion, ambiguity and telling stories: The role of neuroscience in using computer games for learning

Skipping Pong and moving straight to World of Warcraft: the challenge of research with complex games used for learning

In 1972, Atari released a simple digital game in North America entitled Pong, the game simulated table tennis using two lines as paddles with a square to represent the ball. Video games have since expanded in complexity and player engagement. As a result of this engagement, educational models have been proposed that leverage video games. However, rather than begin with research on games as simple as Pong, many have focused on complex systems based on massively multiplayer online games. This article reviews approaches to designing or using video games for learning and identifies challenges to designing, using and researching games.

‘Economists Who Think like Ecologists’: Reframing Systems Thinking in Games for Learning

Over the past several years, educators have been exploring the potential of immersive interactive simulations, or video games for education, finding that games can support the development of disciplinary knowledge, systemic thinking, the production of complex multimodal digital artifacts, and participation in affinity spaces or sites of collective intelligence. Examining verbal interaction data from a game-based after-school program, the authors offer evidence that expert players of learning video games: (a) think relationally and strategically about elements of the game system; (b) draw on their experiences in similar activity domains when approaching systemic problems; (c) consider systemic properties as they are tied to action; and (d) think and act in markedly social ways while engaged in systems-oriented reasoning. Using discourse analysis, the authors examine the talk and game play of two participants to understand how they think about the relationships between elements of the game system. From these exchanges a kind of play emerges which contains the kinds of systemic thinking that educators might hope to find in twenty-first-century classrooms. There was evidence from students' reasoning that the situated systems thinking in which they engage contains the reasoning and problem-solving strategies for complex economic, political and geographic systems that twenty-first-century classrooms might value.

FORMS OF LEARNING IN COLLABORATIVE VIDEO GAME PLAY

Extensive literature has shown that games provide engaging, dynamic, and authentic learning contexts. An understanding of how learning takes place while gaming can inform the design of effective educational games and aid their integration into contemporary classrooms. This study used inductive methods to provide a detailed description of the use of video games for learning in a school setting. Results demonstrate that learning occurred across multiple levels and multiple granularities, and can be triggered by particular cues in the game or social environment. Characteristics of the most frequently occurring instances of learning are discussed. Results of this study suggest great potential for the use of games in education for learning, and can inform future game design.

Knowledge of the educational implications of computer games by some student teachers in Southwest Nigeria

This paper reports an expost facto research carried out to find out from 153 Computer Education Students (from Colleges of Education) their knowledge of Computer games. The researcher specifically set out to investigate, if those Computer Education Students thought pupils could actually learn form Computer games. The findings show that these level of Nigerian teachers in training who would be the ones to inculcate computer skills into the learners (at primary and Junior secondary school level) still needs a lot of education themselves especially in the areas of the capabilities of computer games for learning. The Nigerian Journal of Guidance and Counselling Vol. 9(1) 2004: 16-24