- A growing body of research proves the potential value of serious games. (Serious) games open many new opportunities to learn complex skills in higher education. Games can support the student to acquire learning results like:
a.Developing domain-specific knowledge and skills.
b.Identifying and evaluating key professional attitudes. - Some games, particularly the collected data in the game, give the teacher an understanding of how students approach and solve problems. It also gives an estimation of the progress of students in a learning trajectory. This can be used to improve the learning of the students.
- Research shows that university students benefit from incorporating games into the learning process to supplement traditional lectures.
- Simply placing educational content in a game is not enough to be helpful as a learning activity. A (serious) game should meet several design criteria. There should be a clear learning goal. (why should one play this game?). The game should engage and activate the students’ thinking. This ensures that students feel involved in the game.
- Playing games can be helpful in education if they are well chosen and supported effectively by the teacher: they should not merely be a superficial learning activity.
See: Stott and Neustaedter; Klein Nagelvoort and Dankbaar (2017); Vlachopoulos and Makri (2017); Luckin (2018),