ABSTRACT
At the heart of any discussion of games and learning is a single question: is there any evidence that digital games have an impact on learning, or on learners' motivations to learn? In this chapter, I will explore the evidence of the use of computer games, and games in general, to support and facilitate meaningful learning experiences. There are many examples of the use of games for learning in formal education, from the development of classification skills in early years (e.g. Sung, Chang, & Lee, 2008), to primary school geography (Tuzun et al., 2009), strategic and reasoning abilities (Bottino & Ott, 2006), arithmetic (Miller & Robertson, 2010) and learning vocabulary (Fisser, Voogt, & Bom, 2012). At secondary level there are examples from across the curriculum, including history (Huizenga, Admiraal, Akkerman, & ten Dam, 2009), science (Muehrer, Jenson, Friedberg, & Husain, 2012), language learning (Connolly, Stansfield, & Hainey 2011), business (Lainema & Makkonen, 2003) and computer science (Papastergiou, 2009a). There are fewer examples from post-compulsory education, although some can be found, such as game-based induction in both further and higher education (Home, 2013; Piatt, 2009) and examples of games used in university settings. There tends to be a bias towards games used in scientific and technical areas, such as food safety (Rooney & MacNamee, 2007), software engineering (Connolly, Stansfield, & Hainey, 2007) and mechanical engineering (Coller & Scott, 2009). In addition to these examples from formal education, there are examples in the research literature of the value of games to support learning in informal contexts, such as learning civic engagement (Ferguson & Garza, 2011), fire and street safety (Coles, Strickland, Padgett, & Bellmoff, 2007), diabetes education (Glasemann, Kanstrup, & Ryberg, 2010) and adult literacy (Kambouri, Thomas, & Mellar, 2006). However, while hundreds of case studies exist, it has been argued that the evidential underpinning of the field is based on an extrapolation from case studies rather than a unified theoretical basis (Klabbers, 2003). As a field there is still a lack of robust evidence regarding the value of games for learning and there is an identified need among policy makers for more robust empirical work to provide baseline evidence on how educational games can be used most effectively to teach (de Freitas, 2007); Van Eck (2007) argues that “we do not yet have the theoretical and research base we need to establish guidelines for practice” (p. 31).
