ABSTRACT
Education began to embrace academic games in the 1970s, and since that time, the interest has continued to grow. In this chapter, the purposes, uses, and types (puzzles, guessing games, trivia games, role plays, and simulations) of academic games are summarized. Overall, academic games are organized by goals, student preparation, tools needed to play, activity itself, monitoring of game play, assessment, and closure through debriefing. The primary advantage of including academic games as an instructional strategy is that doing so makes teaching and learning fun, thereby increasing student motivation to learn. A disadvantage of this approach is the challenge it can be to set up and manage an academic game. Research on academic games is generally positive, with findings including the following: instructional support and scaffolding can improve student learning in games, collaboration improves student learning, feedback through gaming results in positive outcomes, and feedback is critical in the learning process. This chapter also includes tips for using academic games in online courses. The chapter concludes with detailed descriptions of 14 active learning strategies that can be used with academic games.
