Digital games and learning: theoria, cultura, praxis

contributors | abstract | presentation | biographies

Contributors

Paul Maharg (University of Northumbria)
Sara de Freitas (University of Coventry)

Format

Paper presentation

Abstract

While play is commonly associated with children’s learning, more recently with the proliferation of leisure games played on consoles, PCs and handheld devices, adults are engaging more with games. This trend is leading to educators, theorists and researchers investigating how games and simulations can be effectively applied in everyday learning contexts. While research is being undertaken to investigate this relationship, such exploratory work suffers from being fragmented, coming as it does from separate disciplinary approaches that have developed different terminologies and approaches.

This session will focus upon a newly-published collection of essays on digital games and simulations, titled Digital Games and Learning. The book aims to bring together different disciplinary theoretical perspectives upon learning through games and play into one volume, and to develop integrated interdisciplinary perspectives. The book explores conceptual theories and historical perspectives upon learning through play, providing commentaries on designing learning games and exploring the changing academic and training practices required to support these new forms of technology-enhanced learning.

In addition, the book will propose challenging views of games and simulations within education, both in the UK and abroad. It will propose that:

1. Game and simulation theory is very much still an emerging field, and does not yet have the boundaries and status of a field of inquiry. Educational theory is important to the development of that field, and to the design and practice of serious games and simulations.
2. The research on simulations and gaming is uneven, in quality and quantity and in need of greater cohesion suggesting a need for cross-disciplinary analyses such as provided by this volume.
3. With widespread use of the internet and broadband uptake rising steeply, policy-makers and educators increasingly require to think about educational design and practice in substantially different ways than they have done in the past, and in ways that will transform learning. This is one of the significant transitions underway in both formal and informal education in higher education (HE), in further education (FE), schools and the workplace.
4. Creative use of games and simulations allows us to develop new theory, re-discover old heuristics, and develop imaginative forms of teaching and learning appropriate to the pressures and challenges facing educators and games developers now and in the early decades of the 21st century.

A key strategy in the book designed to address the above points is its structure. The first section, Theoria, deals with theory predominantly; the second, Cultura, deals with the culture of gaming and sims, while the third, Praxis, deals with the practice of designers and implementers, as well as the experience of users. The three-section division is an integral part of our argument in this volume. Games and simulations, when taken seriously by educators, nearly always involve a re-appraisal of the elements of educational theory, culture and practice; and we would argue that successful implementations nearly always involve re-considerations of these three domains. The extent of this re-appraisal depends, of course, on a number of pre-existing factors – teachers’ and students’ openness to change, the extent of the game implementation, the extent to which the contextual curriculum and its physical environment can be altered, and so forth. It also depends on the extent of the implementation under consideration. Small-scale games and simulations (i.e. small in terms of time, effort to construct and play) can be easily accommodated within other more conventional pedagogic approaches. But like other forms of pedagogic innovation such as problem-based learning, when games and simulations are significantly scaled up they often challenge accepted theories of learning, institutional cultures of learning, teaching and assessment, and even the physical practices of teaching and learning in classrooms, lecture halls, laboratories, seminar rooms, examination halls and libraries. In this context they can become disruptive learning technologies. If potentially disruptive technologies are to become transformative, then we need to consider not just their theory and practice, but their effects on culture as well – the pre-existing cultures of conventional learning and assessment that we would wish to develop.

In our presentation we discussed the argument of the book, citing most of the chapters. We focused for examples on the legal educational content of the volume, and discussed the future of this and other similar publications with our audience.

Presentation

Short biographies of panel members

Sara de Freitas is Professor of Virtual Environment and Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry where she leads an applied research team working closely with industry. The Institute is the first of its kind in the UK and it plays a leading role in the development of game-based learning. Formerly Sara worked as Lab Manager, Project Manager on development programmes and Senior Research Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab. Sara continues to hold a visiting senior research fellowship at the Lab. She is also working with TruSim (Blitz Games), the Vega Group PLC and the University of Birmingham on a £2 million UK Technology Strategy Board part-funded Serious Games research and development project which is developing highly immersive learning games demonstrators to solve business training needs. In 2003 Sara founded (and continues to Chair) the UK Lab Group, which brings the research and development community together to create stronger links between industrial and academic research through supporting collaborative programmes and for showcasing innovative R&D solutions for the knowledge economy. Sara publishes in the areas of: pedagogy and e-learning; change management and strategy development for implementing e-learning systems and educational games and electronic simulations for supporting post-16 training and learning.

Paul Maharg is Professor of Legal Education in the School of Law, University of Northumbria. He was Director of the two-year, JISC/UKCLE-funded project, SIMPLE (SIMulated Professional Learning Environment). Paul is the author of Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the Law in the Early Twenty-first Century (2007, Ashgate Publishing), editor of and contributor to Digital Games and Learning (2010, in press, Continuum Publishers), and has published widely in the fields of legal education and professional learning design. His specialisms include interdisciplinary educational design, and the use of ICT at all levels of legal education. He was appointed a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Fellow of the RSA. Paul’s blog is Zeugma.

Last Modified: 24 February 2011