Games and learning is a field of education research that studies what is learned by playing video games, and how the design principles, data and communities of video game play can be used to develop new learning environments. Video games create new social and cultural worlds – worlds that help people learn by integrating thinking, social interaction, and technology, all in service of doing things they care about. Computers and other technologies have already changed the way students learn. Integrating games into education has the potential to create new and more powerful ways to learn in schools, communities and workplaces. Games and learning researchers study how the social and collaborative aspects of video game play can create new kinds of learning communities. Researchers also study how the data generated by game play can be used to design the next generation of learning assessments.
Research
The games and learning research world studies how new digital media tools shift the topic of education research from recalling and repeating information to being able to find it, evaluate it and use it compellingly at the right time and in the right context. Games and learning research explores how games and game communities can lead to 21st-century educational skills such as higher order thinking, the ability to solve complex problems, think independently, collaborate, communicate and apply digital tools to effectively gather information.
Research shows the educational and social benefits of digital games. Games do not need to be specifically geared towards education to be educational tools. Games can bring together ways of knowing, ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of caring. As John Dewey argued, schools are built on an obsession with facts. Students need to learn by doing, and with gaming, students can learn by doing something as a part of a larger community of people who share common goals and ways of achieving those common goals, making gaming a benefit for social reasons as well. Gaming has also changed the look of content-driven curriculum in schools. In content-driven media, people learn by being told and reflecting on what they are told. In gaming, game designers create digital environments and game levels that shape, facilitate and even teach problem solving.
Games also teach students that failure is inevitable, but not irrevocable. In school, failure is a big deal. In games, players can just start over from the last save. A low cost failure ensures that players will take risks, explore and try new things.
Much of the debate about digital games for education was based on whether or not games are good for education. But that question is overly simplistic. The National Research Council's report on laboratory activities and simulations makes clear that the design and not merely the medium of a physical or virtual learning activity determines its efficacy. Digital games are a medium with certain affordances and constraints, just as physical labs and virtual simulations are media with certain affordances and constraints. Simulations and digital games actually share many similarities in this regard. Although there are multiple definitions for games, the key characteristics differentiating games from simulations involve the explicit inclusion of (a) rules for engaging with the simulation, (b) goals for players to pursue, and (c) means for indicating players' progress toward those goals. Properly designed, features of games can provide powerful affordances for motivation and learning. Individual studies have shown, for example, that well designed games can promote conceptual understanding and process skills, can foster a deeper epistemological understanding of the nature and processes through which science knowledge is developed and can produce gains in players' willingness and ability to engage in scientific practices and discourse.