Une chaire d'enseignement et de recherche consacrée aux liens entre science et jeu vidéo sera inaugurée ce soir à Polytechnique. Plus...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Games and Learning
This is a good paper, though it's frustrating to watch a completely undefended approach to learning being applied over and over again. The authors, after describing how games support learning in general, attempt to apply this to the formal environment. Part of the problem is a lack of experience with the games - the authors complain that the 'enemies' in war games are usually German, Vietnamese or Arab, for example, without realizing that in many games players can pick either side to play. But mostly, the authors' application of the games to a classroom environment contorts them - in the case study involving Civilization, for example, a value of the game is that players learn that there isn't a simple cause-effect relation between actions and consequences, but in the chart (pp. 18-19) the authors say that the players should be able to "infer from the feedback supplied how their actions have caused particular effects." In the recommendations (p.30) the authors state that "Educators should be clear about the exact learning goals they are hoping to achieve when using games". More...
La Direction générale des entreprises (DGE), en partenariat avec Business France, le Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée, le Syndicat des Editeurs de Logiciels et de Loisirs et le Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo, lance la campagne Join the Game pour promouvoir la France auprès des studios et éditeurs de jeux vidéo implantés au Royaume-Uni. Plus...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Games-Based Learning; a Serious Business Application
Good white paper covering game-based learning in some detail. I like the author's approach: "Games-Based learning isn't about using simplistic 'Pong' or 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' as a means to teach people raw facts. That was the approach that edutainment took and which by and large failed." There's a longish list of links to other white papers on p. 6 and a large number of examples. More...
Sapiens, un service de Sorbonne Paris Cité, a conçu un escape game insolite installé depuis février au 20ème étage de la tour Montparnasse. L’objectif? Sensibiliser les universitaires à l’innovation pédagogique. Plus...
De plus en plus de professeurs d’universités utilisent les «serious games» dans leurs cours. Ces jeux vidéo ludiques augmenteraient l’attention et l’implication des étudiants. Plus...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning in Immersive Worlds: a Review of Game Based Learning
Substantial (73 page PDF) report on the use of games to support learning, including a section on Second Life. The report is well written and well documented but I am still uneasy with it, as it seems to me to take the perspective of the use of games by learning (eg., see the diagrams on page 36, and the conclusions on page 7 (eg. "Use of both leisure (commercial-off-the-shelf) games and proprietary games need to be embedded in practice effectively and in accordance with sound pedagogic principles and design."), which really seem to be in no way supported by the literature). Rather than using games in learning, I still think educators should be looking at how to use learning in games. Related: a greate example from GamaSutra of a game design document. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Serious Games Discussion
Good summary of a discussion on the 'Serious Games' mailing list, and I like the way the conversation evolves. It begins with Clark Aldrich saying, "I am realizing that I don't have a good term for the 'interactive part' of a educational simulation/serious game" and continues with suggestions ranging from "gameplay" to "the Game." But then it takes a right turn with Kent Quirk observing, "This message just clarified for me what's been bothering me about this whole exercise: it's the attempt to legislate jargon... attempting to define a set of unambiguous terms for a very ambiguous environment." Right. More...
By . I am in the process of finalising a second edition of Teaching in a Digital Age. (For more on this, see Working on the second edition of Teaching in a Digital Age: some lessons learned about open publishing.) I will post over the next few weeks the relatively few new sections in the book for comments and feedback. More...By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Games and Education
George Siemens links to a Slashdot discussion of games and learning and comments, "Games fit the typical profile of academic envy, namely the condition where we see many people doing something and desire to then use the same tools or processes for teaching and learning." As usual I comment at this juncture that the effort should be to put learning into games, not games into learning. More...
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