Literature Review
“A good video game is a series of interesting choices.” (Sid Meier)
As noted by Kenneth Ginsburg, play is an important element for healthy childhood development, including learning (2007). Games provide opportunities for play through simulated environments, and can be an important part of learning and intellectual development (Ke, 2009). Games provide us with opportunities to think, understand, prepare, and execute actions (Gee, 2003).
Digital games, perhaps more than any other learning innovation, combine “motivation, engagement, adaptivity, simulation, collaboration, and data collection that can’t be achieved at scale any other way” (McClarty, et al., 2012, p.22).
In his book ‘The Game Believes in You’, Greg Toppo (2015) writes that:
“Games...have a little something for everyone. For the...student-centred, games scratch an essential itch, sucking kids into a deep stream of engagement and teaching them to think, negotiate, imagine, and problem-solve….For the skills-and-assessment type, games scratch and equally essential itch: they frontload massive amounts of content, offer focused and efficient drill-and-practice, build on prior knowledge, strengthen grit, and, at the end of the day, deliver a personalized performance data stream that would make the most hard-assed psychometrician smile” (p.7).
My focus for the past 10 years has been on the use of ‘social impact games’ with students. Social impact games aim to teach and possibly change attitudes about pressing complex local and global issues. A number of studies have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of specific social impact games. For example, a study by Alhabash and Wise (2012) focused on the game PeaceMaker in which “people play the role of the Palestinian president or the Israeli prime minister and respond to various scenarios through diplomatic, economic, and military decision-making” (p.356). One finding of the study was that “participants, before playing PeaceMaker, expressed higher favorability toward Israelis than Palestinians” but after playing the role of the Palestinian president “reported positive changes in explicit attitudes toward Palestinians”. Another study by Dana Ruggiero (2014) looked at the effect of playing the game Spent, a game about surviving poverty and homelessness in a major U.S. city. The study found that playing the game “significantly increased the affective learning score” of students in terms of their attitudes towards homeless people (p.3423). Another study undertaken in Brazil focused on the game Stop Disasters which aims to teach about how different kinds of disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, impact communities (Felicio, et al., 2014). The study found that “the children who played the [game] significantly changed their perception of the risks faced” (p.590).
Digital games, perhaps more than any other learning innovation, combine “motivation, engagement, adaptivity, simulation, collaboration, and data collection that can’t be achieved at scale any other way” (McClarty, et al., 2012, p.22).
In his book ‘The Game Believes in You’, Greg Toppo (2015) writes that:
“Games...have a little something for everyone. For the...student-centred, games scratch an essential itch, sucking kids into a deep stream of engagement and teaching them to think, negotiate, imagine, and problem-solve….For the skills-and-assessment type, games scratch and equally essential itch: they frontload massive amounts of content, offer focused and efficient drill-and-practice, build on prior knowledge, strengthen grit, and, at the end of the day, deliver a personalized performance data stream that would make the most hard-assed psychometrician smile” (p.7).
My focus for the past 10 years has been on the use of ‘social impact games’ with students. Social impact games aim to teach and possibly change attitudes about pressing complex local and global issues. A number of studies have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of specific social impact games. For example, a study by Alhabash and Wise (2012) focused on the game PeaceMaker in which “people play the role of the Palestinian president or the Israeli prime minister and respond to various scenarios through diplomatic, economic, and military decision-making” (p.356). One finding of the study was that “participants, before playing PeaceMaker, expressed higher favorability toward Israelis than Palestinians” but after playing the role of the Palestinian president “reported positive changes in explicit attitudes toward Palestinians”. Another study by Dana Ruggiero (2014) looked at the effect of playing the game Spent, a game about surviving poverty and homelessness in a major U.S. city. The study found that playing the game “significantly increased the affective learning score” of students in terms of their attitudes towards homeless people (p.3423). Another study undertaken in Brazil focused on the game Stop Disasters which aims to teach about how different kinds of disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, impact communities (Felicio, et al., 2014). The study found that “the children who played the [game] significantly changed their perception of the risks faced” (p.590).
