Casual games are entertaining tools to enhance learning by actively engaging players in a competitive yet safe environment. Games are structured activities with rules, goals and problem solving activities. In order to impart effective learning, digital games must be: important content; easy to understand and interesting, but not distort the learning process; not penalize for wrong answers; and allow for multiple winners recognizing the gain of all participants. Instructional games incorporate practical, cognitive, motivational, and social skills into their design in order to keep the learner engaged while stimulating high level thinking and problem solving.


Advantages

  • Supports a wide range of learning styles (Aldrich, 2009)
  • Try new skills without fear of failure (Gredler, 1996)
  • Can encourage interpersonal relationships, thus encouraging cooperative and competitive behavior within a strategic context (Gee, 2003)
  • Can develop key learning skills such as cognitive processing, logical thinking and independent decision making (Prensky, 2001)
  • Provides a flexible structure that can address many different learning objectives (Van Eck, 2007)
  • Are fun and motivating (Gee, 2003; Prensky; 2007; Squire, 2005)
  • Learner scaffolding incorporated in the design of good games (Gee, 2003)
  • Players achieve mastery through repeated trial and errors (Gee, 2007)


Disadvantages

  • Will not be effective if the learning objective is not aligned to the correct game type (Becker, 2007)
  • Gaming walks a fine line between enabling instruction or causing distractions (Reiber & Noah, 2008)
  • Can be complex, expensive, and time consuming to design (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009)


Best Practices

  • Select content that is important (Gredler, 1996)
  • Keep the game easy to understand and interesting but not distort the learning process (Gredler, 1996)
  • Students should not lose points for wrong answers (Gredler, 1996)
  • Games should not be zero-sum exercises but recognize the learning gains of all participants (Gredler, 1996)
  • Allow players to have the option to makes things happen by actively engaging (Gee, 2007)
  • Allow players to modify the game to his own learning style or level of difficulty (Gee, 2007)
  • Players progresses through the game level of difficulty in an organized progression (Gee, 2007)
  • Offer challenges and feedback in a way that makes the player feel the outcome is achievable (Gee, 2007)
  • Keep the game fair and provide levels of depth (Gee, 2007)
  • Card games are good for memorization, concept matching, pattern recognition (Oblinger, 2006)


Apply this technology


Real World Examples

The Nobel Prize Foundation has created many educational games to explain the work of Nobel laureates. See them at :

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/

These are educational games provided by Karl Kapp. They are used by several corporations to add fun and excitement to their educational offerings and add appeal for the incoming Gamer generation.

http://www.karlkapp.com/Games.html

These games are based on cognitive neuroscience research and development that improves brain health and performance. Lumosity is the first general brain fitness program from Lumos Labs. They specialize in creating innovative applications of the latest developments in brain science in order to help people lead better lives.

http://www.lumosity.com/


Practice

Homemade PowerPoint Games are a special kind of interactive software called interactive modules. An interactive module, similar to any reusable learning object, is any self-contained, short, interactive experience that is relevant to school-based learning — they are not lessons, but resources for lessons and learning. The games found on this site can be modified to fit any content.

http://it.coe.uga.edu/wwild/pptgames/resources.html

The Hot Potatoes application enables you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like.

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/index.php

Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games within very little time. You can make games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects, and even 3D games! And when you’ve become more experienced, there is a built-in programming language, which gives you the full flexibility of creating games with Game Maker. What is best, is the fact that Game Maker can be used free of charge.

http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker