Digital Gaming

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Digital Gaming

Lori Powell, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Definitions and background

Digital games, both commercial and educational (Panoutsopoulos, 2009), continue to grow in popularity in the education field (Iacovides, Aczel, Scanlon, & Woods, 2012). They are a favorite form of play for twenty first century students (Tsai, Yu, & Hsiao, 2012). Digital games have many qualities that align them with cognitive development theories such as situated cognition, interactional cognitive development and schema theory (Neville, Shelton, & McInnis, 2009). Elements of digital game design also align well with constructivism and constructionist learning theory (DeGrove, Bourgonjon, & Looy, 2012). Digital games operate within a multimedia environment (Cheng, Lou, Kuo, & Shih, 2013) where users interact with multi-modal texts and graphics (Iacovides et al., 2012). The interactive technology of digital games provides students with virtual learning experiences (Li, 2012). Digital games can portray real-life situations and simulate complex social networks (Neville et al., 2009). Immediate feedback is delivered to users within a digital game environment (Papastergiou, 2009). Digital learning games blend education with entertainment (Erhel & Jamet, 2013).

Affordances

Constraints

Links

Digital Games Research Association

Digital game-based learning: It's not just the digital natives who are restless by Richard Van Eck

Digital games for learning: Conclusions and recommendations from the IMAGINE project

Digital games in schools: A handbook for teachers

Kurt Squire on Civic Engagement through Digital Games (Big Thinkers Series)

Works Cited

Busch, C., Conrad, F., & Steinicke, M. (2013). Digital games and the hero’s journey in management workshops and tertiary education. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 11(1), 3-15.

Cheng, Y., Lou, s., Kuo, S., & Shih, R. (2013). Investigating elementary school students’ technology acceptance by applying digital game-based learning to environmental education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(1), 96-110.

De Grove, F., Bourgonjon, J., & Looy, J. (2012). Digital games in the classroom? A contextual approach to teachers’ adoption intention of digital games in formal education. Computers in Human Behavior, 28, 2023-2033.

Erhel, S., & Jamet, E. (2013). Digital game-based learning: Impact of instructions and feedback on motivation and learning effectiveness. Computers & Education, 67, 156-167.

Iacovides, I., Aczel, J., Scanlon, E., & Woods, W. (2012). Investigating the relationshiops between informal learning and player involvement in digital games. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(3), 321-327.

Li, Q. (2012). Understanding enactivism: a study of affordances and constraints of engaging practicing teachers as digital game designers. Educational Technology Research and Development, 60, 785-806.

Neville, D., Shelton, B., & McInnis, B. (2009). Cybertext redux: using digital game-based learning to teach L2 vocabulary, reading, and culture. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(5), 409-424.

Ott, M., & Pozzi, F. (2012). Digital games as creativity enablers for children. Behavior & Information Technology, 31(10), 1011-1019.

Panoutsopoulos, H., & Sampson, D. (2012). A study on exploiting commercial digital games into school context. Educational Technology & Society, 15(1), 15-27.

Papastergiou, M. (2009). Digital game-based learning in high school computer science education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation. Computers & Education, 52, 1-12.

Pelletier, C., & Oliver, M. (2006). Learning to play in digital games. Learning, Media and Technology, 31(4), 329-342.

Sardone, N., & Devlin-Scherer, R. (2010). Digital games for English classrooms. Teaching English with Technology, 10(1), 35-50.

Sardone, N., & Devlin-Scherer, R. (2010). Teacher candidate responses to digital games: 21st century skills development. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(4), 409-425.

Tsai, F., Yu, K., & Hsiao, H. (2012). Exploring the factors influencing learning effectiveness in digital game-based learning. Educational Technology & Society, 15(3), 240-250.

Yang, Y. (2010). Building virtual cities, inspiring intelligent citizens: Digital games for developing students’ problem solving and learning motivation. Computers & Education, 59, 365-377.