Gaming 101

• Here are two prominent pedagogical approaches to using games for educational purposes: Instructionist philosophies and Constructionist ones. 

• Instructionists turn to the concept of designing instructional games to teach educational content and subject specific materials.      

• Constructionists focus on students creating their own games rather than learning content from pre-made ones. According to Kafai "Rather than embedding "lessons" directly in games, their goal has been to provide students with greater opportunities to construct their own games-and to construct new relationships with knowledge in the process"(2006). 

• Additionally, with constructionist games, the learner is involved in every stage of the design process and begins to build technological fluency. 

• This in turn, increases learner agency because by creating games, students not only learn how to use new technological tools but also how to produce digital artefacts and technology while developing new ways of thinking and problem solving.

• Constructionist pedagogy allows young gamers to act as both consumers and producers of game design and content.

• Both instructionist and constructionist approaches merit value and as educators, we need to be open to incorporating gaming in education "whether it's about playing or making games for learning." Kafai (2006).         

• Today, students must learn a vast set of 21st century skills to "thrive in a rapidly evolving technology saturated world." Figueroa-Flores (2016) and to align with the needs of young learners, the approaches of Gamification and GBL seem to be what is needed to engage and motivate students.  

• According to Figueroa-Flores "Games have remarkable motivational power; they utilize a number of mechanisms to encourage people to engage with them, often without reward, just for the joy of playing and the possibility to win" (2016)

• Many people think that both Gamification and GBL are the same, but this is not the case.

• Gamification is when we apply game-design thinking to non-game applications to make the activity more fun and engaging; this philosophy can be applied to any industry. 

• In education, gamification is used to motivate and change the leaner behaviour using fun and engaging game-like environments.

• GBL is dissimilar to gamification in that it is game-play with defined learning outcomes and using the idea to have students play in order to fulfill a learning objective.

• GBL is the concept of using games to augment the learning experience.        

According to Fullerton (2019), games have formal elements and dramatic ones. The formal elements  are The ones that differentiate a game from other types of media: rules, procedures, players, resources, objectives, boundaries, conflict, and outcome. The dramatic elements include challenge, premise, characters, and story. If you're considering designing your own game, then Fullerton's book is where you should probably start. The following video contains some tips on how to manage your classroom when you choose GBL.