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| Energy in action (photo from morguefile) |
Digital games provide entertainment, and certainly educational digital games should be entertaining. In fact, the entertainment characteristics may help with the initial engagement (Lowe, Lee, Schibeci, Cummings, Phillips & Lake, 2009). Yet providing entertainment activities will not sustain "emotional and cognitive interest leading to important learning" if the learners are not faced with "appropriate challenges"(Lowe et al., p. 239).
Yang (2012) states that "play is synonymous with learning, leading to cognitive and emotional development within a social and cultural context" (p. 365). This cognitive and emotional development can occur in digital games that provide "practice for students to re-examine their solutions and methods for avoiding problems in a non-threatening environment" (p. 372). Yang discovered that there was evidence of "sustained and improved motivation over the course of the full semester" with the learners who engaged in a digital game-based learning platform (p. 372).
This "energy in action" is also apparent with 13-14 year old students involved in a commercial digital game (Sims 2-Open for Business) used in an educational context. Panoutsopoulos and Sampson (2012) discovered that "commercial simulation games, as opposed to educational games, can be considered as highly interactive environments providing learners with structure and authentic contexts" (p. 25). Providing a problem-solving model through a digital game allows for engagement where students can draw links between abstract concepts and real-world practices (Panoutsopoulos and Sampson).
According to joystiq.com, the technology advisory firm Gartner Inc. predicts that video games will be a $115 billion dollar industry by 2015. Additionally, digital game-based learning is being extensively used by many private and public institutions, including the United States military (Schaaf, 2012). It is a learning platform that helps "humans play to learn and learn to play" (Schaaf, p. 55). Digital game-based learning can effectively challenge and offer learners an engagement that is "energy in action" and "cognitively and affectively" connects them to their learning experience.
References
Frydenberg, E., Ainley, M. & Russell. V.J. (2005). Student motivation and engagement. Schooling Issues Digest. Department of Education, Science and Training.
Hinkle, D. (2011). Report: Game industry worth 74 billion in 2011. Retrieved from:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/05/report-game-industry-worth-74-billion-in-2011/
Lowe, K., Lee, Libby., Schibeci, R., Cummings, R., Phillips, R., & Lake, D. (2010). Learning objects
and engagement of students in Australian and New Zealand Schools. British Journal of Educational
Technology. 41(2), 227-241. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00964.x
Panoutsopoulos H. and Sampson D.G. (2012). A Study on Exploiting Commercial Digital Games into
School Context. Educational Technology & Society. 15 (1), 15-27.
Quinn, C. N. (2005). Engaging learning: designing e-learning simulation games. San Francisco. CA:
Pfeiffer.
Schaaf, Ryan. (2012). Does Digital Game-Based Learning Improve Student Time-On-Task Behaviour and Engagement in Comparison to Alternative Instructional Strategies? Canadian Journal of Action
Research. 13 (1), 50-64.
Yang, Ya-Ting C. (2012). Building virtual cities, inspiring intelligent citizens: Digital games for developing students' problem solving and learning motivation. Computers & Education. 59(2), 365-
377. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.01.012
