General Integration
CNN Today On How Serious Games Integration
Can Make You Smarter
by Scott Steinberg
Scott Steinberg's article on Serious Games Make you Smarter.
(With no intention of being exhaustive, here is how Scott Steinberg
describes four contexts for serious game integration.
)

Hands-On Experience. More interactive and absorbing than passive forms of entertainment like movies and TV, video games promote higher levels of engagement because observers are actively and enthusiastically involved with on-screen activity. It's a point author James Paul Gee emphasizes in "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy," which argues that digital diversions promote more substantive learning. As he once told UK newspaper The Guardian, "good video games ... are complex designed systems that players have to learn to engage with reflectively and strategically." Many children can pass biology and physics tests, he points out, but few can apply that knowledge to solve real-world problems.

Job Training. Businesses and Universities are increasingly turning to Serious Games as training tools to educate employees. From Cisco to NASA, the U.S. Army to IBM, numerous corporations, government organizations and colleges have all employed interactive learning solutions. Consider Loyalist College in Ontario, which offered students a simulation of U.S./Canada border crossings where they played the role of guards, and actually saw the rate of successful test scores jump from 56% to 95%. Or the Hilton Garden Inn, which built a custom 3-D hospitality training game for the PlayStation Portable, reasoning that it's more informative and reasonable for staffers to experiment by interacting with virtual customers.

Contextual Learning. Video games may soon save lives as well. According to Dr. Jeffrey Taekman, the director of Duke University's Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, "Serious Games are the future of education." Besides offering medical students the ability to practice on patients (which is much safer in the digital world), simulations offer health care providers several upsides. Chief among them, he says, are the abilities to make choices, see results and apply information immediately. Beyond allowing for greater scalability and group collaboration than traditional classrooms, every decision made in a virtual world, he continues, can be tracked and benchmarked against best practices, then standardized or archived for others' review. "The traditional textbook will soon become passe'," he suggests. "Gaming platforms will offer an interactive way for students to learn and apply information in context."

Teamwork and Collaboration. Massively multiplayer games such as "World of Warcraft," "EVE Online" and "City of Heroes" may seem like idle fantasy and sci-fi escapes. But many require active teamwork and high-level project management to do well. Collaborative elements often take the form of loose alliances disguised as in-game guilds, factions or virtual corporations where players join forces to complete objectives such as seizing territory or battling otherwise unstoppable opponents. As Georgia Tech professor and Persuasive Games founder Ian Bogost explains, these titles frequently require advanced mastery of resource allocation and practical leadership techniques. Requiring direct management and informed decision-making at multiple levels, group heads quickly learn to delegate responsibility, direct personnel and steer allies toward a common goal. Actively promoting teamwork between seemingly disparate individuals located states or entire countries apart, he says, all ironically offer preparation for a job in today's increasingly virtual workforce.

About the Author. Scott Steinberg is the head of technology and video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global, as well as the founder of GameExec magazine and Game Industry TV. The creator and host of online video series Game Theory, he frequently appears as an on-air technology analyst for ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CNN.

How to Integrate Games with Curriculum
by Tommy Peterson

While game-based learning may be innovative, it doesn't work without proper integration into other curriculum strategies, and certainly it is not the answer for all students, says Michael Barnett, professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

"There are no silver bullets in education," Barnett says. "One thing that we do know is that a variety of learning experiences matters."

Barnett gets no argument from the front-line educators who spoke to EdTech. eMODE sessions begin with an hour of traditional arithmetic to build a foundation of calculation skills, says Norman Alston, the founder and CEO of the eMODE Learning Foundation.

"There has to be a balance, and students need to learn to focus and concentrate so they can do more complex tasks, even when those tasks are game-based or technology assisted," says Alston.

Many digital projects that revolve around games require research, storyboarding, writing and presentation skills, says Kristi Druvenga, instructional coach for the Oelwein (Iowa) Community School District.

"The motivation from the technology is important, but it can't be screen time all the time," says Druvenga.

In the Bennington (Neb.) Public Schools, games are tied closely to the curriculum and learning objectives.

"We're a high-achieving district and our parents have high expectations," says instructional technologist Jason Schmidt. "We're not just using tools like Minecraft because it's a fun thing to do and the students enjoy it; we're doing it because we've found they learn some things more effectively by using them."

If the adoption of games and game-based learning has slowed, as suggested by their absence from the 2015 Horizon Report, one reason may be what the tools and techniques are called, says Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), which partners with the New Media Consortium.

"Calling a tool or a technique a game doesn't help with acceptance," Krueger says. "Maybe rebranding to something like 'games to learn' or 'serious games' would be better."

Jason Schmidt of Bennington (Neb.) Public Schools points out that confusion also derives from the fact that terms frequently are used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, however, they mean different things.

  • Game-based learning refers to the use of specific games as learning tools, says Schmidt. Examples are Minecraft, SimCity, World of Warcraft or Portal 2.
  • Gamification, defined in the 2014 Horizon Report, is the process of integrating "game-like elements and mechanics, including quests, experience points, leader boards, milestones and badging, among others, into nongame environments."
  • Gaming, according to Miriam Webster's definition, generally means "the activity of playing computer games," regardless of whether the aim is learning, recreation or gambling.

Three Guidelines for Effectively
Integrating Games in the Classroom
by Karl Kapp

A number of meta-analysis studies have been conducted in the field of game-based learning attempting to create generalizable findings that can be used to select and create meaningful educational and instructional game experiences. Here are three guidelines culled from research on the subject.

The vast frozen wilderness faces the player as she learns about heat flow formula.
The vast frozen wilderness faces the player as she learns about heat flow formula.

Embed the instructional game into the curriculum. Games should be embedded in instructional programs that include debriefing and feedback so the students understand what happened in the game and how these events support the instructional objectives. The best learning outcomes from using a game in the classroom occur when a three step process is followed. The teacher should first introduce to the students the game and learning objectives covered in the game. The teacher should tell the students what they will be learning by playing the game. Then the students play the game. Finally, after the game is played, the teacher should debrief the students on what they learned. This process ensures that learning occurs from playing the game. (Hays 2005 & Sitzmann, 2011).

Games need to include instructional support. In games without instructional support, the students will tend to learn how to play the game rather than learn domain-specific knowledge embedded in the game. Instructional support to help learners understand how to use the game increases the instruction effectiveness of the gaming experience by allowing learners to focus on the instructional information rather than the requirements of the game. Instructional support features can include elaborative feedback, pedagogical agents, and multi-modal information presentation. (Wouter, 2013, Ke 2009, Hays,2005)

Ensure game objectives align with curriculum objectives. Ke (2009) found that the learning outcomes achieved through computer games depend largely on how educationalists align learning (i.e., learning subject areas and learning purposes), learner characteristics, and game-based pedagogy with the design of an instructional game. In other words, if the game objectives match the curriculum objectives, disconnects are avoided between the game design and curricular goals (Schifter, 2013). The more closely aligned curriculum goals and game goals, the more the learning outcomes of the game will match the desired learning outcomes of the student.

References:
Hays, R. T. (2005). The effectiveness of instructional games: A literature review and
discussion. Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (No 2005-004).

Ke, F. (2009). A qualitative meta-analysis of computer games as learning tools. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.),Effective Electronic Gaming in Education (Vol. 1, pp. 1-32). Hershey: Information Science Reference.

Schifter, C. C. (2013). Games in learning, design, and motivation. In M. Murphy, S. Redding, &. Twyman (Eds.), Handbook on innovations in learning (pp. 149-64). Philadelphia, PA: Center on Innovations in Learning, Temple University; Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.centeril.org/

Sitzmann, T. (2011). A meta-analytic examination of the instructional effectiveness of computer-based simulation games. Personnel Psychology, 64(2), 489-528.

Wouters, P., van Nimwegen, C., van Oostendorp, H., & van der Spek, E. D. (2013, February
4). A Meta-Analysis of the Cognitive and Motivational Effects of Serious Games. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0031311.

If you want to learn more about games and gamification, here are some resources you may find useful.