Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching provides educators with easy and practical ways of u... more Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching provides educators with easy and practical ways of using games to support student engagement and learning. Despite growing interest in digital game-based learning and teaching, until now most teachers have lacked the resources or technical knowledge to create games that meet their needs. The only realistic option for many has been to use existing games which too often are out of step with curriculum goals, difficult to integrate, and require high-end technology.
Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching offers a comprehensive solution, presenting five principles for games that can be embedded into traditional or online learning environments to enhance student engagement and interactivity. Extensive case studies explore specific academic perspectives, and featured insights from professional game designers show how educational games can be designed using readily accessible, low-end technologies, providing an explicit link between theory and practice. Practical in nature, the book has a sound theoretical base that draws from a range of international literature and research.
ABSTRACT Studies on game-based learning often focus on positive motivations, behaviours, and outc... more ABSTRACT Studies on game-based learning often focus on positive motivations, behaviours, and outcomes. However, negative social behaviours are common in play. Game play is important for moral learning since players learn to comply with rules, fairness, and accountability. Games allow, and sometimes encourage, negative behaviours, which release players’ obligations to behave in accepted ways and create new social situations where players learn to control behaviours as well as tolerate such behaviours in others. Sometimes this process fails and the magic circle of play is transgressed. Negative social behaviours, such as cheating, spoil-sporting, or sabotage, threaten to “break the magic circle” by disrupting the boundary between “game world” and “real world.” Even if game rules encourage such behaviours, they can undermine the accepted social norms in both contexts. Educational game designers, researchers, and practitioners must appreciate and understand negative social behaviours and attitudes and the processes they can initiate.
This symposium considers the space where simulation/games and learning intersect, and explores th... more This symposium considers the space where simulation/games and learning intersect, and explores the use, meaning, and relevance of the term engagement for that intersection. The 10 articles included in this collection explore engagement from a variety of different perspectives. Together, they define the field further, highlight the importance of engagement for game design (providing models and typologies to assist future design), explore options for measuring and diagnosing engagement (describing tools and methodologies through evidenced case studies), and tackle the all-important question of whether engagement has a connection to learning. As a whole, this symposium issue provides those designing, researching, or teaching with games a number of useful tools, perspectives, and methodologies for considering engagement as a core part of their work in the area.
Twenty-First Century skills like creativity, problem solving and collaboration are acknowledged a... more Twenty-First Century skills like creativity, problem solving and collaboration are acknowledged as fundamental in the technology-driven knowledge society. Increasingly, education is being called on to support the development of such skills from the earliest years. This paper examines a promising methodology for this purpose, Learners' Digital Game Building (LDGB) and more specifically the design and construction of digital games by learners working together in collaboration. Advocates of Game-Based Learning (GBL) have long espoused its wide-scale adoption as a pillar of modern, learner-centred education. LDGB takes this a step further: when students design and make games rather than just play them, they invest themselves holistically in the learning process. The authors believe that setting LDGB within an explicitly collaborative framework will not only enhance educational affordances, but will also prove an effective way to nurture learners' capacity to collaborate fruitfully, which itself is a key Twenty-First Century Skill. The paper discusses the theoretical basis for LDGB and describes its actuation in a European research project called MAGICAL. The project aims to generate tools, resources and teacher know-how for implementing collaborative LDGB activities, and to verify the validity and applicability of the methodology in primary and lower secondary school.
Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching provides educators with easy and practical ways of u... more Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching provides educators with easy and practical ways of using games to support student engagement and learning. Despite growing interest in digital game-based learning and teaching, until now most teachers have lacked the resources or technical knowledge to create games that meet their needs. The only realistic option for many has been to use existing games which too often are out of step with curriculum goals, difficult to integrate, and require high-end technology.
Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching offers a comprehensive solution, presenting five principles for games that can be embedded into traditional or online learning environments to enhance student engagement and interactivity. Extensive case studies explore specific academic perspectives, and featured insights from professional game designers show how educational games can be designed using readily accessible, low-end technologies, providing an explicit link between theory and practice. Practical in nature, the book has a sound theoretical base that draws from a range of international literature and research.
ABSTRACT Studies on game-based learning often focus on positive motivations, behaviours, and outc... more ABSTRACT Studies on game-based learning often focus on positive motivations, behaviours, and outcomes. However, negative social behaviours are common in play. Game play is important for moral learning since players learn to comply with rules, fairness, and accountability. Games allow, and sometimes encourage, negative behaviours, which release players’ obligations to behave in accepted ways and create new social situations where players learn to control behaviours as well as tolerate such behaviours in others. Sometimes this process fails and the magic circle of play is transgressed. Negative social behaviours, such as cheating, spoil-sporting, or sabotage, threaten to “break the magic circle” by disrupting the boundary between “game world” and “real world.” Even if game rules encourage such behaviours, they can undermine the accepted social norms in both contexts. Educational game designers, researchers, and practitioners must appreciate and understand negative social behaviours and attitudes and the processes they can initiate.
This symposium considers the space where simulation/games and learning intersect, and explores th... more This symposium considers the space where simulation/games and learning intersect, and explores the use, meaning, and relevance of the term engagement for that intersection. The 10 articles included in this collection explore engagement from a variety of different perspectives. Together, they define the field further, highlight the importance of engagement for game design (providing models and typologies to assist future design), explore options for measuring and diagnosing engagement (describing tools and methodologies through evidenced case studies), and tackle the all-important question of whether engagement has a connection to learning. As a whole, this symposium issue provides those designing, researching, or teaching with games a number of useful tools, perspectives, and methodologies for considering engagement as a core part of their work in the area.
Twenty-First Century skills like creativity, problem solving and collaboration are acknowledged a... more Twenty-First Century skills like creativity, problem solving and collaboration are acknowledged as fundamental in the technology-driven knowledge society. Increasingly, education is being called on to support the development of such skills from the earliest years. This paper examines a promising methodology for this purpose, Learners' Digital Game Building (LDGB) and more specifically the design and construction of digital games by learners working together in collaboration. Advocates of Game-Based Learning (GBL) have long espoused its wide-scale adoption as a pillar of modern, learner-centred education. LDGB takes this a step further: when students design and make games rather than just play them, they invest themselves holistically in the learning process. The authors believe that setting LDGB within an explicitly collaborative framework will not only enhance educational affordances, but will also prove an effective way to nurture learners' capacity to collaborate fruitfully, which itself is a key Twenty-First Century Skill. The paper discusses the theoretical basis for LDGB and describes its actuation in a European research project called MAGICAL. The project aims to generate tools, resources and teacher know-how for implementing collaborative LDGB activities, and to verify the validity and applicability of the methodology in primary and lower secondary school.
There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the incr... more There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the increased use of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for collaborative learning. However, this paper argues that collaborative gaming worlds have been in use much longer and are much wider in scope; it considers the range of collaborative gaming worlds that exist and discusses their potential for learning, with particular reference to higher education. The paper discusses virtual gaming worlds from a theoretical pedagogic perspective, exploring the educational benefits of gaming environments. Then practical considerations associated with the use of virtual gaming worlds in formal settings in higher education are considered. Finally, the paper considers development options that are open to educators, and discusses the potential of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) for learning in higher education. In all, this paper hopes to provide a balanced overview of the range of virtual gaming worlds that exist, to examine some of the practical considerations associated with their use, and to consider their benefits and challenges in learning and teaching in the higher education context.
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2000
This paper draws on lessons learned from the development process of the entertainment games indus... more This paper draws on lessons learned from the development process of the entertainment games industry and discusses how they can be applied to the field of game-based learning. This paper examines policy makers and those wishing to commission or develop games for learning and highlights potential opportunities as well as pitfalls. The paper focuses on ten key points in which the authors feel from experience in both commercial game development and education that parallels are drawn between the entertainment and educational games development processes.
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Books by Nicola Whitton
Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching offers a comprehensive solution, presenting five principles for games that can be embedded into traditional or online learning environments to enhance student engagement and interactivity. Extensive case studies explore specific academic perspectives, and featured insights from professional game designers show how educational games can be designed using readily accessible, low-end technologies, providing an explicit link between theory and practice. Practical in nature, the book has a sound theoretical base that draws from a range of international literature and research.
Papers by Nicola Whitton
Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching offers a comprehensive solution, presenting five principles for games that can be embedded into traditional or online learning environments to enhance student engagement and interactivity. Extensive case studies explore specific academic perspectives, and featured insights from professional game designers show how educational games can be designed using readily accessible, low-end technologies, providing an explicit link between theory and practice. Practical in nature, the book has a sound theoretical base that draws from a range of international literature and research.