The Haunted School on Horror Hill

As gaming technology for personal computers has advanced over the last two decades, the text-adventures that predominated in the 1980s ceased to be commercially viable. However, the easy availability of powerful authoring systems developed by enthusiasts and distributed free over the Internet has led to a renaissance in text-adventures, now called “Interactive Fiction.” The educational potential in playing these text-based games and simulations was recognised when they were first popular; the new authoring systems now allow educators to explore the educational potential of creating these works. The authors present here a case-study using the ADRIFT authoring system to create a work of interactive fiction in a split grade 4/5 class (9 and 10 year-olds) in Quebec. They find that the process of creating the game helped improve literary and social skills amongst the students.

Designing Game-Based Learning Activities in Virtual Worlds

In view of the current interest taking place in the area of education and virtual worlds, such as Second Life®, many educationalists have began to explore the benefits of applying game-based learning in these environments. In this chapter, the authors attempt to explore the elements associated with game-based learning in virtual worlds, focusing on the design process and how effective game-based learning activities can be achieved following pedagogic frameworks. The authors view learning in games as a form of driving learners’ motivations and this is reflected in the design and development of the virtual respiratory ward at Imperial College virtual hospital explained in this chapter.

Intelligent Tutoring and Games (ITaG)

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have been producing consistent learning gains for decades. The authors describe here a conceptual framework that provides a guide to how adding game-based features and components may improve the effectiveness of ITS learning environments by improving students’ motivation to engage with the system. A problem consistently faced by ITS researchers is the gap between liking and learning. ITSs effectively produce learning gains, but students often dislike interacting with the system. A potential solution to this problem lies in games. ITS researchers have begun to incorporate game-based elements within learning systems. This chapter aims to describe some of those elements, categorize them within functional groups, and provide insight into how elements within each category may affect various types of motivation.

A Taxonomy of Educational Games

Digital games are a relatively new tool for educators, who often misunderstand their value for education. This is partly since they perceive many very different types of games in the same way. The authors propose a taxonomy of digital games in education based on the features that are relevant to instructional design and educational research. The taxonomy outlines four genres into which games fall, depending on the cognitive functions and skills they engage. The theoretical basis for the taxonomy the authors develop draws from R. M. Gagne’s Five Categories of Learning Outcomes, Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, and D. H. Jonassen’s Typology of Problem Solving. The links between these theories and the educational games taxonomy will allow educators and researchers to understand games in the light of their educational affordances. Instructional design based on these theories can more effectively integrate games into the classroom.

Principles of Educational Digital Game Structure for Classroom Settings

The scope of learning with games is determined by their genre, characteristics and scenarios, or content. Therefore, the frame of a game containing its type and content somewhat confines the activities of players to learn and to play. Game-based learning adopts much of the same interactional techniques that have been used in traditional instruction. Learning with games includes activities such as ‘learning by practice and feedback’, ‘learning by doing’, ‘learning by making mistakes’, ‘learning by discovery’, and ‘learning by role playing’. Games are adopted for classroom based learning to motivate students, to support main curricular activities, to strengthen what is learned, and to summarize and evaluate what is learned. There is no straightforward guideline on how to use a game effectively in classroom settings. However, the instruction for teaching and learning with games needs to be designed before any other actions are taken.

Exploring Guild Participation in MMORPGs and Civic Leadership

This chapter reports the results of a survey study of the civic engagement and participation of guild members in the massively multi-player online role play game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW). Further, the authors explore the implications of the results of the study for K-12 social studies education. Specifically, the authors focus on the potential of MMORPGs such as WoW for meeting content standards in the social studies—in this case, the National Standards for Civics and Government--and for impacting on pre-service social studies teacher education.

The Experience of an Online Management Simulation Game to Foster Collaboration and Teamwork

With a new degree on Management, a new course called Management Simulation Project was created and started in the summer semester of 2006-2007 at the Lisbon School of Accountancy and Administration (ISCAL). The teaching team wanted to explore ways to bring the realities of business decision-making and action into the curriculum. This chapter reflects on the concept of educational simulations and games and aims at describing how a web-based competitive management game helped to achieve that. The authors discuss their objectives and those of the game and outline their reasons for choosing it. They describe the context at ISCAL and the game’s main features, showing how it is played over a semester. The authors consider, as online simulation facilitators of what is predominantly a student-led learning process, that the game helps students to gain a real ‘feel’ for collaboration, managerial decision-making and teamwork. An exploratory study was carried out. A questionnaire was designed to tap students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the use of a simulation/game as a new teaching method in five areas: career preparation, traditional educational goals, use of time, involvement and satisfaction, and a set of specific skill competencies. The results of the authors’ empirical study show that students perceive the simulation course as superior to the lecture-centered method. On the overall dimensions, the simulation course was seen as a better vehicle in helping students make career preparations, achieve educational goals, and utilize time. The results are presented and discussed.

Use of Interactive Online Games in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The purpose of this study is to examine how the use of multiplayer English teaching online games influences students’ self-efficacy and their English performance scores. The participants of this study were sixty elementary students in Korea. They were selected based on the scores on the social-affective value test and then divided into two groups-high and low groups. During five weeks, the participants played with an English teaching online game two hours per week. The students’ self-efficacy scores were collected before and after they played the online game. Their English performance scores on the online game were collected to compare the two groups. The findings indicated that their online game experience increased self-efficacy. Interestingly, students with low social-affective values showed more improvement than those with high social-affective values in both self-efficacy and performance scores.

Virtual Gaming A Platform for Multi-Skills and Multi-Literacies for Gamers

This chapter explores how virtual gaming (VGaming) serves as an ideal platform for harnessing multi-skills and multi-literacies. It argues that VGaming provides the opportunity for gamers (learners) to engage not only in social learning, situated learning and problem based learning, but also in meta-gaming, meta-literacies, and multi-tasking. It demonstrates all this through the use of five case studies involving five virtual games: Everquest Online Adventures; NUCLEO; Homicide; Mad City Mystery; and Lineage. Most importantly, it maintains that VGaming exposes gamers to 21st century skills. Against this background, the chapter provides, first, an overview of VGaming. Second, it presents five case studies showcasing how virtual games (VGs) help leverage multi-skills and multi-literacies for gamers. In addition, it illustrates how VGs enable gamers to engage in social learning, situated learning and problem based learning on the one hand, and in meta-gaming, meta-literacies, and multi-tasking, on the other hand. Third, it argues that VGaming exposes gamers to 21st century skills. Fourth and last, the chapter outlines future trends for VGaming.

ClassSim

This chapter presents one approach to educator development through games and simulations. The goal of the authors’ project was to enhance pre-service teachers’ ability to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of teaching. Some criteria that the authors regarded as indicators of success were the facilitation a professional dialogue, an emerging understanding of content delivery and the articulation of workplace culture in the teaching profession. The chapter describes the theory underpinning of the design and the research approaches used. In particular, the authors explain how cognitive load theory was applied to the design of the key features of this virtual learning environment. They also summarize six years of research that has consistently found that the virtual learning environment of ClassSim provides an effective way of introducing pre-service teachers to their future work in classrooms.