Game-based learning
In short A way of teaching that uses games, purpose-made or commercial, as the material of a lesson.
Definition
Game-based learning is a way of teaching that uses games as the material of a lesson; it is a method, not a kind of game. A teacher might run a commercial strategy game to open a history unit, build a lesson around a purpose-made educational game, or redesign a whole course as a series of quests. The game provides the experience, and the teaching happens around it, in framing beforehand and discussion afterward, where players connect what they did to what they are meant to understand. The approach rests on a simple claim: a good game already teaches its own rules efficiently, through practice and feedback, and that capacity can be pointed at other subjects.
Not to be confused with
- Educational game
An educational game is a product made to teach, while game-based learning is the classroom practice of teaching with games of any kind.
- Gamification
Gamifying a course adds points, levels, and badges to ordinary coursework, whereas game-based learning has students actually play games.
- Simulation
Simulation-based teaching runs a model of a system to study it, which need not involve goals or play; game-based learning depends on both.
Where the game lives
- rules: used
- goals: used
- feedback: used
- uncertainty: used
- choice: used
- play: used
Game-based learning borrows a whole game and keeps all of it. What it adds lies outside the game, in the teacher's framing and the debrief, and the one thing it puts at risk is play, which becomes less free once it is assigned.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
Civilization IIIFiraxis Games, 2001
The commercial strategy game Kurt Squire used to teach world history in his classroom studies.
Minecraft: Education EditionMojang Studios and Microsoft, 2016
A version of a commercial sandbox game packaged with lesson plans and classroom tools.
Quest to LearnInstitute of Play, 2009
A New York City public school whose curriculum was designed around games and game-like missions.
In the essays
No essay takes this term on directly yet. Its neighbors in the guide are linked above; the newsletter announces new essays.
Sources
- BookDigital Game-Based Learning. McGraw-Hill, 2001. The book that popularized the term for corporate and school training. Reading list
- PaperFoundations of Game-Based Learning. Educational Psychologist, 2015.
- BookVideo Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. Teachers College Press, 2011. Reading list
- PaperA meta-analysis of the cognitive and motivational effects of serious games. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2013. Finds learning gains over conventional instruction, larger when games are supplemented with other instruction.