Implications and Benefits of Educational Games - Essay Example

of Lecturer] Education The Implications, Benefits, Research, and the Assessment of Serious Gaming Integration into the K-12 Educational Model Introduction Games and gaming have been integral to educational systems since time immemorial. In fact, with the past and current technological advancements, more and equally more sophisticated games have been introduced into the classroom. In particular, digital games have emerged as rather common educational games and teaching tools. An important aspect of educational games is that they should be and are designed to fit learner needs and different tasks and activities that k-12 educational systems require learners to undertake at school and at home (Krumholz 2). Before delving deeper into the implications and benefits of integrating gaming into the k-12 educational system, it is essential to understand what educational gaming is. In essence, an educational game is a game designed and constructed in a manner that teaches human beings, especially school-going children on the various subjects and aspects of life taught at school. In other words, educational games teach children not only learning skills but also real-life skills. Fortunately for educational games and children in the k-12 educational systems, stakeholders such as educators, parents, and governments have largely appreciated the role of educational gaming in recent times (Krumholz 5). This change of attitude in stakeholders has resulted in the increased realization and awareness on the physical, educational, and psychological benefits and implications of gaming on learning and development of learners in the k-12 educational systems. Consequently, educational gaming has become conventional in educational systems as a teaching tool. This paper explores the benefits and implications of educational games in k-12 educational system and the researches and assessment of educational gaming. Implications and Benefits of Educational Games Among the specific features of educational games that make them vital learning and instruction tools is their being interactive, thus their use to teach learners their objectives, school and learning rules, problem solving techniques, how to interact, and how to adapt to different learning situations. Gaming thus helps learners enjoy their fundamental needs of learning, which include involvement, enjoyment, passion, and motivation, gratification of one’s ego, creativity, and emotional stability (Krumholz 5). Of great importance is the role of educational gaming in supporting social interactions among k-12 learners. Besides its physical and psychological implications, educational gaming also has biological and evolutionary benefits for learners. For instance, gaming helps learners in connectivity, movements, brain growth and development. Games, particularly computer games are thus not merely entertainments tool in educational settings. There are numerous ways in which gaming helps transform k-12 educational system learners. The first implication is with regards to changing the process of learning. Second, games change peoples’ view of learning as a process characterized by strictness that only permits certain academic activities and performances, thereby making learning a more relaxed and friendly exercise. In the end, learners enjoy learning since they no longer view it as excessively demanding and strict on their part. In addition, educational gaming, more so computer games, should not be viewed as just another multi-billion industry out to make money from parents and schools; rather, educational games help children see and participate in new worlds that may have remained closed to them (Krumholz 6). In this sense, educational gaming enables learners to act, talk, think, and inhabit roles and responsibilities that might have remained inaccessible as they concentrate only on books and other traditional forms of classroom work. It is the virtual world of games such as computer games, which give educational games their powerful learning context since while playing these games, learners encounter and experience the concrete realities that words and symbols only describe. Interaction Implications The implications and benefits of interactive educational games in which many parties compete cannot be overemphasized. For instance, through interactive gaming, learners are able to experience the struggles and successes of collaboration in their struggle to achieve goals and solutions to problems. This statement is true for all types of educational games, be they collaborative digital, non-collaborative digital, and non-digital games. Serious educational games have also been indicated to result in a hands-on, minds-on opportunity for learners to actively create, focus on, and change situations while in the process of learning the implications of their situations. For instance, as learners develop the urge and commitment to succeed in a particular game, they develop the willingness to learn the real-life scenarios in which such a gaming situation is likely to occur (Laurence 5). That is, their urge to learn more about a given situation and how given problems would be solved grows. Rather than propel children to memorize what is learnt and watched on television programs such as documentaries, serious educational gaming empowers learners to actively participate in the discovery of new information, solutions, and ideas. Notably, serious educational gaming also allows learners to have a taste of the real tension and suspense in the crisis at hand. The other benefits of educational gaming to learners relate to focus, memory, confidence, and self-esteem. Focus is built in the sense that educational games help children develop patients as they wait to achieve gaming goals and move to the next level. Self-esteem on the other hand is realized as learners continuously get better results and quicker responses/reactions from the gaming system, an indication of how fast they have achieved objectives and grown in understanding the game. Educational games also encourage learners to do things the right way and achieve the set targets after which they are often rewarded with something to take to the next level of the game. It is apparent that focus is also developed and supported in this context. The development of multiple skills is the other outstanding benefit of educational games to k-12 learners. In this regard, learners can work on multiple skills and subjects across a curriculum at once. Besides the development of traditional educational skills, games empower learners to exploit opportunities for learning skills for leadership, problem-solving, and research. The other benefits of educational games to k-12 learners include fun-pleasure and enjoyment, play, gives rules and structure, goals, motivation, are interactive, and are adaptive. Moreover, games have feedbacks, conflicts, challenge, competition, and problem-solving thus builds creativity. There are several negative implications of educational gaming, more so digital or computerized games. The most obvious of these implications is the difficulty encountered in trying to fit these games into learning timetable. Because of the difficulty in fitting games into timetable, it has become rather hard to determine the duration a learner may use to learn a game and accomplish goals. By extension, the fitting of other classroom works will also be affected by the problems of fitting games into class timetables. There is also the chance of over-use when games are integrated in a school’s curriculum. That is, teachers and learners may start over relying on educational games, implying them losing on the other aspects and methods of learning (Lin et al 7). Thus, some of the skills not related to educational games could be lost in due to overreliance on games. Addiction to educational games, more so video games has been reported to impact negatively on learners’ skills, making some critics to compare gaming addiction with gambling and alcoholism. Educational games and classroom gaming have been rather controversial in recent times, more so with the emergence of computer games, which have been blamed on the loss of certain learning skills in k-12 learners. However, not all educational games are computer or video games and most of them are actually beneficial to learners as discussed above. It is therefore highly recommended that more researches should be done on the beneficial games and the beneficial aspects of educational games so that their integration in learning processes is promoted. Notably, these researches should be of utmost ethical and professional standards, given that they deal with the lives of children who are rather vulnerable and only the best practices should be applied to their case (Lin et al 5). However, since stakeholders interpret research and normal classroom activities quite differently, there have been issues and questions on the right guidelines for educational gaming research. A rather noncontroversial aspect of future and current researches on educational gaming is that these researches should consider the different educational purposes served by these games. For instance, while some games are clearly designed for educational purposes, others have accidental or secondary educational values while they may not have been designed for educational purposes. In other terms, researches should also target non-educational games that may have certain educational benefits for the k-12 educational system. For instance, researches may aim to explore the role of such games in reinforcing learner development, learning skill development, and expand their views and concepts on given educational subjects such as mathematics. Among the non-educational games that researchers are currently studying to unearth their educational value include board, card, and video games. If the conferences being held on the subject of educational and non-educational games are anything to go by, then educational gaming is here to stay. That parents find it hard to pull their children away from computerized and other types of games at home shows how captivating games could be to the process of learning (Laurence 6). It is this captivating nature of games that educational game designers and researchers are out to unearth and exploit. Consequently, conferences have been held in recent times to chart the way forward for the designing and developing of educational games with equal captivating force as computer games. It is via these game designs that these stakeholders intend to bring about innovation in the educational gaming sector. In fact, the aim of these game designers and researchers is to passionately tap the captivating powers of games to deliver learning and transform the educational system if possible. Educational gaming researchers are thus just on the look out for any opportunity to break the status quo by focusing on building critical thinking and creativity rather than just drill basic content and knowledge into learners. These stakeholders strongly believe that educational games have quite a central role to play in the building of this creativity and critical thinking in learners. Forms of Assessment To study the validity of gaming as an educational tool, there is need to assess the power of games in the k-12 educational system. To be assessed in this regard are the new perspectives of learning and instruction that the capabilities and the possibilities if game-based learning have presented to the k-12 educational system. These new instruction and learning methods have implied that new ways of assessing virtual world learning are implemented. To create a supportive learning environment, it is imperative that learning process and outcomes are aligned with the appropriate assessment tools that are learner-, knowledge-, and assessment-centered (Laurence 4). These tools should help establish whether students have learned in games, what to assess, and how to assess learning outcomes in a game-based learning environment. Similar to the case of other learning media and instruction tools, educational games need to be carefully evaluated and the reason and manner of their use and effects on individual teaching and learning context established. Educators should therefore have the right skills to research and assess the use of games in their classroom and other educational settings. In these assessments, those concerned should establish how games promote interactions among pupils and between their school learning and out-of-school learning and development. Second, assessments should establish how educational games help develop learners’ multimodal design skills, media literacy, and problem-solving abilities (Laurence 9). The role of educational games in catalyzing learners to engage in school-based activities to meet standards-driven benchmarks and outcomes should also be assessed. Finally, gaming assessments should target the use of games in making teaching and learning more relevant to pupils’ engagement with others in society, especially at home and in the educational setting. The two major types of assessment that should be used on educational games are summative and formative assessment. While summative refers to assessments carried out at the end of a course or a learning process, formative assessments are carried out throughout the lifetime of a project or a learning process. Thus, summative is the assessment of educational games while formative is the assessment for educational games for educators to consider new approaches and steps for teaching. Conclusion There are several benefits and implications of non-digital and digital educational games including their power to motivate k-12 learners to interact not only amongst themselves but also with learning situations and crises. In this regard, educational games teach learners adaptation, problem solving, interaction, rules, structures, and goals. Furthermore, learners’ fundamental needs such as enjoyment, involvement, motivation, emotion, social interaction, and ego gratification are met through participation in educational games. The benefits and implications have prompted games designers and researchers to look for ways in which the status quo in educational systems in which learners are constantly drilled with knowledge content could be changed to make learning in K-12 educational system more critical and creative in nature. However, it is recommended that the appropriate assessment tools are used in evaluating the effectiveness and relevance of the applied or proposed educational games to processes of learning and instruction. Works Cited Krumholz, H. Classroom Games Serve Many Purposes Here’s How to Use Them, 2011. Retrieved on October 19, 2012 from ‹http://www.priceless-teaching-strategies.com/classroom_games.html› Laurence, J. F. The 2010 Horizon Report: The K12 Edition. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2010. Retrieved on October 19, 2012 from ‹http://wp.nmc.org/horizon-k12-2010/chapters/game-based-learning/#0› Lin, G. H. C., Kung, T. W. T., and Chien, S. C. Computer Games Functioning as Motivation Stimulants, 2011. Retrieved on October 19, 2012 from ‹http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED528578.pdf› Read More