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Trend update: Gaming is a higher education wild fire

Gaming in education has traditionally belonged to the K-12 sphere, but in recent years higher education has taken a vested interest in this learning approach, from taking a game-based approach in classrooms to ensuring future educators learn the merits of it.

Key points:

(Next page: How universities are leveraging gaming)

In 2014, MIT launched a series of free MOOCs focusing on educational games [1]. MIT’s teacher program already focused on digital game, including its middle school math game, Lure of the Labyrinth, and MIT’s Education Arcade focuses on games for learning, curriculum development, and professional
development.

“There has to be a real need,” Eric Klopfer, director of the Education Arcade, which hosted the courses, said in 2014. “What we’d like to get out of it is some great, interesting ideas that maybe some people move forward with.”

Gaming in higher education has come a long way since 2014.

A course from the Penn State College of Education’s Learning Design and Technology [2] (LDT) program not only integrated technology in the classroom, it encouraged the students’ use of commercial video games.

LDT 401: Gaming 2 Learn, an online course offered this summer through Penn State World Campus, trained current educators and teachers-in-training how to integrate commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) video games into their lessons.

“This course develops 21st century teaching skills beyond the basics of technology integration,” said Ali Carr-Chellman, department head and professor of learning and performance systems. “It teaches current and future educators how to keep students engaged in learning by utilizing the technology they
use in their everyday lives.”

The course focused on the use of COTS games such as “Minecraft,” “World of Warcraft,” “Call of Duty” and others as an educational part of the curriculum. Rather than looking at educational games, which kids really dislike, Carr-Chellman said, Gaming 2 Learn focused on having kids experience learning through the games they already play.

During the course, students completed a project that required them to select a COTS game and describe the integration that connects with their specific content area. Students also observed children as they played their favorite games and participated in playing games with them, and then reported on those observations and experiences.

UC Irvine is launching an official e-sports and gaming initiative this fall [3], which the university says is the first of its kind at a public research university.

A state-of-the-art arena equipped with high-end gaming PCs, a stage for League of Legends competitions and a live webcasting studio will be constructed at the Student Center, and as many as 10 academic scholarships will be offered to students on the team.

“UCI eSports will be built on four pillars: competition, academics, entertainment and community,” said Thomas Parham, vice chancellor for student affairs. “We hope to attract the best gamers from around the world, and our academic programs in computer gaming science, digital arts, computer science,
engineering, anthropology, law, medicine, neuroscience and behavior create a strong foundation for research and inquiry related to gaming.”

UCI’s Institute for Virtual Environments & Computer Games facilitates multidisciplinary research projects in the fields of anthropology, art, computer science, engineering, history, medicine, psychology, science and technology.

From the LIVE Lab at Texas A&M University in 2014 came Triseum [4], founded by André Thomas and Rahul Khanorkar.

“Game-based learning can serve as the missing link between curriculum objectives and student expectations,” said Thomas. “Education, as an industry, is better served when academic rigor presents itself through experiences and technologies students naturally gravitate to.”

Triseum’s ARTé: Mecenas is the first game from the ARTé suite, a collection of games with targeted learning outcomes supporting a traditional college-level Art History survey course. Designed to supplement course instruction, ARTé: Mecenas teaches the interconnectedness of local and international economies, in Renaissance Italy, and how those economies influenced art and art patronage.

As games become integrated into learning, game developers are realizing that many gaming attributes—challenges, rewards, and collaboration, to name just a few—have relevance in the classroom, too.

Part of what’s buoying this change is the fact that instructional models are changing [5]—the sage on the stage model no longer aligns with the way today’s students wish to learn, said Robert Brodnick, founder of Brodnick Consulting Group, Inc. Students increasingly want collaborative and flexible
learning spaces.

And when learning spaces change, “it’s a huge deal,” Brodnick said. “Classrooms have remained unchanged for decades. We’ve learned this all really matters. If you build and create spaces in a more flexible way, you’re not dictating to students how they’re going to have to learn.”

Read more on gaming in higher ed here: