V33c: Researching and evaluating a digital game for the classroom
Overview of course
Computer, digital or video digital games (referred to as ‘digital games’ in this course) are increasingly being incorporated into teaching and learning as educational resources or legitimate ‘texts’. Both teachers and researchers believe there are educational advantages for including digital games in the classroom:
- they are a ‘persuasive medium’, which may influence players’ thoughts and actions
- they are popular and motivate players through gameplay alone or with others; this motivation could be used strategically to support pupils’ engagement with school-based learning tasks and objectives
- they are ideal virtual learning environments (VLEs) where pupils practise skills through authentic situated learning
- they can be played and explored as digital texts for consideration in ‘media literacy’ and can also be classed as ‘media objects’
- they support the development of skills that are important for 21st century learners such as cooperation, teamwork and problem solving, in both offline and online environments.
Similar to other texts and media, practitioners need to carefully consider why and how they want to include digital games in their individual teaching and learning contexts. The main aim of this course is to develop skills for researching and evaluating the use of digital games in your own classroom or other setting.
By the end of the course, you should be asking questions of your own, and others’, practice, such as:
- How can digital games (online, console and handheld) be used to make connections between pupils’ out-of-school use of digital media and classroom based teaching and learning?
- How can digital games be used to develop learners’ multimodal design skills, media literacy and problem-solving abilities?
- How can playing, researching or designing digital games be used as a catalyst for engaging learners in school-based activities to meet standards-driven benchmarks and outcomes?
- How could digital games be used to make teaching and learning more relevant to pupils’ engagement with digital media?