What is Games-Based Learning?

Games are pretty ubiquitous. You can find them in most places. I tend to really love my table top collection; but there are other gamers who are as easily attached to their mobile phones; tablets; PC’s or consoles.

If you’re a gamer, then great! We definitely have a lot in common and can share many of the things that make games a big part of our lives. That includes everything from competition and socialization to exploration and achievement.

But you might be on the fence about games if you’re an educator. Maybe you’ve played a few games on your phone. Perhaps you spent summers with your relatives playing Monopoly, Life, or checkers. Games and teaching have often been two separate things for you. But, you’ve never really thought about combining both of them.

Yet, there is an entire field of educators, designers, teacher, researchers, scholars, and professionals who are using games every day for teaching, learning, training and development. This is games-based learning.

This article covers why we should use games for learning as well as includes a definition of games-based learning. Games-based learning often gets confused with gamification; so this article will discuss the differences between the two. Lastly, the article will cover how skills are developed through games-based learning as well as how to use games-based learning in your own practice.

Why games to begin with?

I’m preaching to the choir here when I say that games are already pretty engaging. But did you know that you can use games for teaching and learning? Also, is it any surprise the games are much more engaging than other teaching methods that emphasize just content or concepts?

That’s because games are a form of engaging content. They are medium that needs to be actively consumed to be truly enjoyed. Unlike stories, lectures, and videos: games provide players with agency and choice. Because of that, games encourage a growth mindset for players to continue to learn, achieve, grow, and develop.

Because of this, players and students better retain knowledge gained form games. Games are an experiential form of learning that empathize the “doing” over the “listening” when it comes to applying what we’ve learned.

Gamers are able to achieve this because games by design are often complex problem spaces. They provide players with the structure and scaffolding for how to succeed; but don’t provide the steps necessary for actually achieving that success. Those steps are in the hands of the players to discover and apply.

That’s where the most visceral part of learning occurs. Though the formal elements of games that includes goals, interaction, feedback, and problem solving; players can increase their learning engagement and sustained motivation.

We may think that most games-based learning must take place digitally. In recent years, the growth of digital games-based learning has indeed grown. But not all games-based learning needs to be applied in this format. Simulations, scenarios, case studies, serious games, mega games, table top games, and other programs like Reacting to the Past examine how these games can be used for teaching and learning.

What is games-based learning?

So what is games-based learning? You might have played some of GBL’s original ancestors like The Oregon Trail. Games like these were designed for and geared towards teaching and learning.

This is what games-based learning is at its heart. Games-based learning is about designing learning activities so that formal game elements and game principles are inherent in the activity, lesson, class or course. Often the lines are so blurred that the game BECOMES the course like with the Brown University’s Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans: Exploring Humanity Through Literature.

In games-based learning we use the game elements themselves to teach a specific skill or achieve a specific learning outcome for students. Sometimes that can be declarative or factual knowledge. In that case most teachers are familiar with using a trivia platform like Kahoot to test students’ recall. But what if you’re teaching something different? How would you teach your students’ something procedural? One of the best ways of doing that is through the use of simulations where real world applications are accurately modeled in the game world.

Most teachers and educators are familiar with creating testes and assessments that focus on the declarative aspect of teaching and learning. That’s why applications like QuizUp and Trivia Crack have become popular. But what if educators wanted to teach something more conceptual? Like how a complex system works? That is already often used in secondary schools and universities with organizations like the Model United Nations or Model European Union. Here, these applications allow students to apply different concepts like negotiation and trade in an environment that is game like.

Lastly, there are opportunities for educators to use commercially available off the shelf games. These are games that were not initially designed to be used for teaching and learning. Though they can still find applications based on the experience of game play. Cooperative table top games like Pandemic and Flash Point: Fire Rescue allow players to role play as a team of medical professionals or fire fighters who have to come together to combat a common crisis.

Compared to gamification

Gamification gets referenced much in popular culture. That often means that people confuse gamification with games-based learning. There are similarities; but there are other differences between them.

Gamification is the use of game like elements in non-game contexts. That is the application of leader boards in fitness applications like FitBit or the use of digital badges that commodify achievements in online courses and learning.

Where games-based learning differs is that they use games AS the medium for learning. Gamification in contrast seeks to augment what is already being done to teach students and individuals. This can be further seen where the formal game elements are used within the context of learning. Only applying a trivia game to your class isn’t games-based learning. However, allowing students to apply different concepts in your class in a space where they continue to fail and try again? That’s closer to games-based learning.

Skills developed through games-based learning

One of the biggest shifts in games-based learning is how content is created, utilized, and applied to learning. In the past we focused on the use of lectures and written tasks for teaching and learning. Whereas, games-based learning uses that same content but provides agency to players to make choices; commit to decisions; and then experience their successes or failures.

This experiential framework of learning through continually doing, reflecting, and experimenting is the hallmark for making games-based learning a pedagogy of first choice for educators. That’s because games-based learning provides the “sandbox” for players to collaborate, problem solve, communicate, and think critically in their own learning.

In fact, the more challenging and complex the game is, the more of these skills are tested, refined, and improved. This is best and most evident when players engage in a flow state during their play. This flow state of heighted engagement has demonstrated to be a positive influence on performance enhancement and learning.

How to use games-based learning

Gamification is the use of games like elements in non-game settings. Games-based learning uses games as the medium for learning. For games-based learning to be effective it requires the instructional designer, teacher, educator, or professor to create well implemented learning tasks that are integrated directly into the game. That means that outcomes and process need to be aligned. If you are trying to teach players to collaborate, cooperate, and work with one another then it doesn’t make sense for there to be a leader board to compare players to one another. This represents a clear disconnect between process and outcome.

Great games-based learning applications focus on problem spaces and frameworks for focusing on the situation at hand. Like many commercially successful games, players are given the structure and scaffolding to succeed; but are not provided with the motivation or instruction on how to succeed. Rather, that is something that players (and learners) provide themselves through play.

What designers, educators, and teachers can do is provide students with flexible agency. That often means the creation of flexible goals and a way for students to direct their own learning based on their choices. I did something similar with my public speaking class where I informed students that it was necessary to accumulate 2,000 points in class activities in order to earn an A. Students could earn points through written assignments, homework, tests, quizzes, and speeches. But what if they completed and aced ALL assignments? If they did that, then there were over 5,000 points available to them. This format gave my students maximum agency in addressing their own learning.

Games-based learning also benefits by carefully controlling the feedback earned by players through different activities. Ideally, students should receive feedback immediately after the completion of a quest, objective, or mission. Such feedback can then be used to improve their next performance.

This feedback should be provided in an atmosphere that honors gaming’s “magic circle” where what happens in the game world stays in the game world. This magic circle should be comfortable and allow students and players to ask, answer, experiment and be “free to fail” within the learning environment.

Takeaways

This article covered why we should use games for learning as well as what games-based learning is. Games-based learning is often confused with gamification; so this article discussed the differences between the two. Lastly, the article covered how skills are developed through games-based learning as well as how games-based learning can be applied by designers, teachers, educators, and faculty members.

This article was about games-based learning. To learn more about gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.

Dave Eng, EdD

Managing Partner

dave@universityxp.com

www.universityxp.com

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Cite this Article

Eng, D. (2020, March 26). What is Games-Based Learning? Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/3/26/what-is-games-based-learning

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