Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Learning and Teaching in Kenya: Use of Video Games in Education

Education is one sector that tries to be consistent despite facing several changes. Vari- ous factors and emerging trends have affected the sector both positively and negatively. The scope of the digital divide is more pronounced in the developing countries and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the technological struggles in Africa more than before. Technology is an enabler in education but not in all contexts because it also causes other challenges that increase the vulnerability of learners and educators in diverse circumstances. The proliferation of digital devices, especially mobile and smart devices, has brought in new changes and innovative ideas that have impacted the sectors input, output, and outcome. Leaners have demonstrated various degrees of adoption and absorption of new devices, and simultaneously educators have integrated and adapted to new pedagogies that resonate with the situation. As a continent, Africa has experienced an emerging trend with digital and non-digital devices interconnected for educational purposes on demand whenever needed. In developing countries like Kenya, more innovative ways of learning have been harnessed for learning and teach- ing purposes .With the penetration of the World Wide Web, the internet of things, availability of electronic devices, and improvement in information communication and technology infrastructure. Video games, which can be played on many platforms and electronic devices, can easily be leveraged for teaching and learning purposes. This study was conducted among learners and educators in an urban setting in Nairobi County, Kenya. The study investigated the potential of video games in education as used by leaners and teachers. The findings indicated that most leaners targeted had personal mobile devices. This gave them easy access to video games, which led to the popularity of these games. The findings also indicated that the leaners were not allowed to use digital devices like mobile phones in the classroom at school but had limited access to video games through desktops and laptops available in their institutions. The findings also showed that the majority of teachers were not keen on using video games for teaching and learning purposes, and this scenario presented a disparity in and a barrier to using multi-disciplinary approaches and integrating technology in teaching and learning. The study recommended that, with more electronic devices available for leaners and other education stakeholders, it is necessary to harness video games for learning and teaching purposes to allow for innovation, discovery, critical thinking, and experiential learning among learners.

The The Application of Video Games in Education:

There is a lack of motivation in high schools that is difficult to ignore. This is even worse in the case of history courses, which are perceived by students as “useless.” Many would cite video games and mobile phones as some of the technological changes that explain how teenagers are less interested in such subjects. However, there is an enormous educational potential in video games that should not be ignored. This work is an explanation of how history can be translated not only through audio-visual language, but also in the form of a new type of word: ludic language. Moreover, an educational activity is proposed in order to find a solution to this lack of motivation. For this activity, the Early Modern period simulator Europa Universalis IV has been chosen as the video game to be implemented in a history class for 14-year-olds.

Gamification in education

This article surveys the main directions of gamification of education. Using a typology of formation of educational space in relation to the virtual space when creating educational computer games (Whitton N. 2009), it shows the degree of involvement of educational computer and video games in education of modern children in Sweden, Finland, Australia, USA and many other countries. It marks a re-orientation of this type of games from the needs of an adult in connection to a child, in direction of the child's needs. It shows that the questions of development of effective, environmentally friendly and at the same time securely motivated educational computer and video games, as well as the question of their impact on child's development in long perspective remains open. In addition, the article states that psychological research of educational tools’ gamification is aimed primarily at addressing the problem of dyslexia, leaving unstudied such specific problems of children as dyscalculia, or the effect of education when mediated by virtual space

Teaching With Portals: the Intersection of Video Games and Physics Education

The author, a high school physics teacher, describes the process of teaching with the commercial video game Portal 2. He gives his story from inception, through setbacks, to eventually teaching a semester of laboratories using the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker, a tool which allows for the easy conception and construction of levels. He describes how his students used the Puzzle Maker as a laboratory tool to build and analyze virtual experiments that followed real-world laws of physics. Finally, he concludes with a discussion on the current and future status of video games in education.

Context-Free Educational Games

A discussion regarding the integration of video games in education has been going on lately. Recent studies indicate a positive shift in attitude towards the role of video games in education, however, the issue of impeding dangers remains. This chapter will focus mainly on presenting an approach to teaching and evaluation through the implementation of educational games created using the Game module, designed as an add-on for the Moodle e-learning platform. Through the use of common ’casual’ games, such as ‘Crossword’ and ‘Hangman’, and drawing questions from the Moodle question bank or the dictionaries, the Game module can be perceived as a freely available tool which can enrich an online lesson across various platforms, including normal computers, PDAs, et cetera. These games have advantages such as technical requirements lower than modern commercial games, facilitating the distribution of game-based contents to broader audiences without demanding constantly updated software as well as hardware infrastructure, simple rules, et cetera.