Policies to guide the adoption of educational games into classrooms
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Policies to guide the adoption of educational games into classrooms Adam Kenneth Dubé1 · Nicholas Joseph Dubé2 Accepted: 28 September 2020 © Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract The shift to digital learning, spurred by the pandemic, will likely lead to the adoption of educational games into classrooms as a way to replace traditional learning activities. This will be a challenge because of a lack of training on the use of games for learning and the difficulty of finding good learning games. The 2019 SRCD Social Policy Report on digital games identifies policy areas that could address these challenges. Further, Ke’s (Educ Technol Res Dev 64:219–244, 2016) systematic review of games research provides insights into how teachers can use games for learning and which types of educational games are effective. Leveraging the report and the review, policies for the digital shift are suggested that will help guide the adoption of games into classrooms. Keywords Serious games · Educational games · Educational policy · Game-based learning
Introduction The digital shift will only accelerate interest in the trend of educators using games to replace and augment traditional classroom practices (e.g., 255% increase in the number of educational game publications from 2011 to 2018, Martin et al. 2011; Wen and Dubé 2019; 50% + of teachers report using games in class once a week, Takeuchi and Vaala 2014). The effectiveness of using games as a resource (Stevenson 2008) will hinge on the creation of policies that address the lack of teacher and student training in their proper use (i.e., Hsu et al. 2015) and the difficulty educators face finding quality educational games (Dubé et al. 2020). The 2019 SRCD Social Policy Report on digital games (Blumberg et al. 2019) identifies areas where such policies would be most beneficial and the ETRD article, “Designing and integrating purposeful learning in game play: a systematic review” by Ke (2016) gives rise to specific policies in each area. * Adam Kenneth Dubé [email protected] https://www.mcgill.ca/tlc Nicholas Joseph Dubé [email protected] 1
McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
2
Regina, Canada
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A. K. Dubé, N. J. Dubé
Game policy areas The SRCD report suggests policy is needed in three spaces, the gamification of education, media literacy, and transfer of learning (Blumberg et al. 2019). In the report, gamification is broadly defined (i.e., to span both game-based learning and gamification) and includes policies that will guide teacher professional development around the use of games or game concepts in classrooms and aid in the creation of evidence-based games curricula. Such policies must be crafted so that they can be consistently implemented across the education sector and be informed by research, not naïve or populist conceptions of how games produce learning (e.g., overemphasis on badging vs formative feedback, Callaghan and Reich 2018) or industry lobbying. Media literacy includes improving all stakehold
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