Introduction
We all know that games are widespread. You can access them from many places, such as desktop computers, consoles, tablets, and smartphones. If you’re a gamer, we have a lot in common: competition, socializing, discovery, achievement, motivation, and much more. If you’re not in the gaming industry, you might be a bit uncertain about games. Maybe you’ve played a few games on your phone, or you’ve played Monopoly or checkers with your friends in the summer, but you might have considered games and learning as two separate things. However, there is a large field of professionals, including educators, designers, teachers, researchers, academics, and professionals, who use games every day for teaching, learning, training, and development. This is game-based learning. This article will examine why we should use games for learning and will include the definition of game-based learning. Game-based learning is often confused with gamification, so this article will also discuss the differences between the two. Finally, the article will address how skills can be developed through game-based learning and how you can use game-based learning in your own practice.
Why Should We Start with Games?
We know that games are quite attractive. But did you know that games can be used to teach and learn? Additionally, it might be surprising that games are more engaging than classical teaching methods that only emphasize the content or concepts. This is because games have an engaging content format. They are environments that must be actively consumed for enjoyment. Unlike stories, lessons, and videos, games provide opportunities for agency and choice to the player. This encourages a growth mindset for players and students to continue to learn, achieve, grow, and develop. As a result, players and students retain information learned from games better. Games are an experiential form of learning that empowers us to do “by doing” rather than “just listening” when it comes to applying what we’ve learned. Players can do this because games are, by design, often complex problem domains. Game developers provide the architecture and scaffold for how to be successful, but it’s up to the players to discover and apply the steps to actualize this success. The instinctual part of learning occurs here. Games have formal elements such as goals, interactivity, feedback, and problem-solving, which can increase players’ learning engagement and continuous motivation. One might think that most game-based learning must be digital. In recent years, the growth of digital game-based learning has indeed increased. However, not all game-based learning needs to be implemented in this format. Simulations, scenarios, case studies, serious games, mega-games, tabletop games, and programs such as Reacting to the Past explore how these games can be used for teaching and learning.
What is Game-Based Learning?
You might have played some of the original ancestors of GBL such as The Oregon Trail. Games like this were designed and aimed for teaching and learning. This is what lies at the core of game-based learning. Game-based learning deals with designing learning activities so that game elements and game principles are relevant to the activity, lesson, class, or course. In game-based learning, we use the game elements themselves to teach a specific skill or achieve a specific learning outcome for students. Sometimes this might be declarative or factual knowledge. Most teachers are familiar with using platforms like Kahoot to test students’ recall. But what if you are teaching something different? How do you teach your students a procedure? One of the best ways to do this is by using simulations where real-world applications are modeled correctly in a game world.
Lastly, educators have the opportunity to use pre-made games that are sold in the market. These are games that were not initially designed for teaching and learning. Nevertheless, they can still find educational applications based on the game-playing experience. Cooperative tabletop games like Pandemic and Flash Point: Fire Rescue allows players to play as a team of doctors or firefighters who have to work together to deal with a shared crisis.
Comparison of Gamification and Game-Based Learning
Gamification is frequently referred to in popular culture. This often means people confuse gamification with game-based learning. There are similarities, but it’s important to remember the differences.
Gamification refers to the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts, such as leaderboards in fitness applications like FitBit or digital badges that reward achievements in online courses and learning. Another example is blockchain-based step-earning apps like Stepn, which incentivizes users to exercise by gamifying it.
The key difference of game-based learning is that it uses games as a learning environment. Meanwhile, gamification aims to enhance what is already being done to teach students and individuals. This is more evident in the use of official game elements in learning contexts. Simply implementing a trivia game in your class is not game-based learning but allowing your students to apply different concepts in your class through an area where they can fail and keep trying is closer to game-based learning.”
Skills Developed Through Game-Based Learning
The most important aspect of game-based learning is how the content is created, used, and applied to learning. In the past, lessons and written assignments were the focus for teaching and learning. However, game-based learning uses the same content, but gives players the ability to make choices; to commit to decisions and then experience their success or failure.
The defining feature of game-based learning as a preferred pedagogy for educators is its experiential framework for continuous learning through doing, reflecting, and trying. This is because game-based learning provides a “protected space” for players to collaborate, problem-solve, communicate, and critically think about their learning.
The more challenging and complex the game, the more these skills are tested, refined, and developed. This is the best and most evident in the flow state that the best and most dedicated gamers enter during gameplay. Increased engagement in this flow state has been proven to have a positive impact on performance and learning.
How to use Game-Based Learning?
Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game environments. Game-based learning uses games as a learning environment. For game-based learning to be effective, the instructional designer, teacher, educator, or professor must create well-implemented learning tasks that are directly integrated into the game. This means aligning the outcomes and process. If you are trying to teach players to work together and collaborate, having a leaderboard that compares players with each other doesn’t make sense. This represents a clear disconnect between process and outcome.
Great game-based learning applications focus on problematic areas and frameworks that require students to focus on the present situation. Similar to many commercially successful games, players are given goals to be successful; however, they are not given motivation or instructions on how to be successful.
What designers, educators, and teachers can do is provide flexible facilitation. This often means creating flexible goals and allowing students to guide their learning based on their choices. A teacher does something similar in a classroom and tells students that to get an A in-class activities, they need to earn 2,000 points. Students could earn points through written homework, homework, tests, exams, and speeches. What if they complete all the assignments and are successful? If they did, they would have more than 5,000 points to use. This format gave my students the maximum authority to take their learning into account.
Game-based learning also benefits from carefully monitoring the feedback students earn through various activities. Ideally, students should receive feedback immediately after completing a task, goal, or assignment. Such feedback can then be used to improve their next performance. This feedback should be provided in an atmosphere that honors the “magic circle” of the game, with the happenings in the game world staying in the game world. This magic circle should be comfortable and allow students and players to ask questions, respond, experiment, and “fail freely” in their learning environment.
Conclusion
This article addresses why we should use games for learning and what game-based learning is. Game-based learning is often confused with gamification; therefore, this article discusses the differences between the two. Lastly, the article discusses how skills can be developed through game-based learning and how it can be implemented by designers, teachers, educators, and instructors.
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